Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

It's not news to anyone who's looked for a job recently that the days of a monolithic career spent at one company or in one well-defined field are over. Many of us have had to — willingly or out of necessity — rethink our career paths. At six years old, I knew what I wanted to be: a designer. I started out designing cars.

Career 8

Career Christensen Disruptive Innovation Travel 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

The financial risk of a career in entrepreneurship is the chance of spending 20 years in startups with nothing to show for it — neither money nor an impact on the world. The most important way to mitigate risk is to become excellent at either engineering, product, selling, or operations and management.

Career 8

Career Company IPO Christensen 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 5, 2012

When Clay Christensen, his son Matt, and I first launched Rose Park Advisors, we considered bringing on investors at the GP (general partner) level. Even in the middle of my career, it felt like a punch to the solar plexus. Love your returns. Of course, no one deserves to go unnoticed.

Career 14

Career Christensen Disruptive Innovation Learning-by-Doing 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 22, 2011

Notwithstanding the considerable career and financial (I am the primary breadwinner) risks involved, it was time to leave my comfortable perch and become an entrepreneur. Six years into my mid-career move, here are some lessons learned from my personal disruptive trajectory: If it feels scary and lonely, you're probably on the right track.

Disruptive Innovation 15

Disruptive Innovation Christensen Metrics Innovation 15

LDRLB

MAY 26, 2014

In that sense, the Christensen solution has become counterproductive; in fact, it’s become dangerous. The managers just don’t have the tool set often to operate. Because when these innovations show up, they are better and cheaper right from the start. If you follow his advice, you’re going to wait too long.

Early Adopters 60

Early Adopters Rogers Disruptive Innovation Innovation 60

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2012

My colleague, Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, addressed this topic in his HBR article, How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay observed that few people, if any, intend at the outset of their career to behave dishonestly and hurt others. But then, Christensen says, they started making exceptions to the rules "just this once.".

Christensen 13

Christensen Self-aware Short-term Long-term 13

Harvard Business Review

MAY 7, 2015

But they worry about “flexibility stigma”—the likelihood that they’ll be labeled less than fully committed to work if they avail themselves of arrangements like flex time and paternity leave — and as a result suffer negative job and career consequences. So what should managers do? The reason? For the U.S.

Survey 8

Survey Christensen Globalization Human Capital 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 7, 2012

For example, an executive in his mid-thirties and in a career transition began by asking "How can I make a bucket of money?" Several years ago Clayton Christensen (author of The Innovator's Dilemma ) and colleagues at Innosight coined the phrase "jobs-to-be-done" as part of a methodology they use to build new billion dollar businesses.

Disruptive Innovation 15

Disruptive Innovation Innovation Christensen Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Bob is the Managing Partner of The Re-Wired Group in Detroit, an innovation incubator and consultancy specializing in demand-side innovation. An engineer, designer, serial entrepreneur, investor, and researcher, he has developed 1,000+ products/services and has collaborated with Clay Christensen at HBS for more than 15 years.

Mentor 15

Mentor Christensen Incubator Learning-by-Doing 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

Over the past six years, we have put in place a 30-person consulting team at EMC Information Infrastructure (EMC II) using a model we have found to be successful, winning projects away from external management consulting firms at a fraction of the cost, and with great “client” (that is to say, EMC) satisfaction.

Consultative 8

Consultative Team How To McKinsey 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 26, 2013

He managed to hold the stock price on a pretty even keel, but no better than that. Two other observations can be made about the public autopsy of Ballmer''s career: It may constitute another small way that Steve Jobs left a dent in the universe. It''s worth taking a step back to look at what all the chatter is about.

Core Competence 9

Core Competence Innovation Christensen Disruptive Innovation 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 11, 2016

I consulted 20 professionals who have worked with or supervised interns in higher education, business, law, and nonprofits, and compiled the most valuable advice for interns from their stories, my own observations, and management literature. Renowned management thinker Clay Christensen recommends spending time formulating the right questions.

Critical Success Factor 8

Critical Success Factor Ryan Christensen Advice 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

I never intended to disrupt my career over and again, eventually becoming a free agent. When my husband was on the hunt for an academic job after completing his PhD, his choices were Boston and San Antonio, both of which had the potential to cut my Wall Street career short. Certainly that has been the case for me.

MBO 9

MBO Learning Curve Christensen Trends 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 15, 2011

I had worked on a variety of volunteer projects with Clayton Christensen over several years, which led to an overlap of exchanges, including having several common acquaintances. Yet, if we distill the three reasons into one, we network because we need to get something done, now or in the future, and we can't do it alone.

Christensen 15

Christensen Project Social Capital Banking 15

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 16, 2014

As Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen described in his mega-bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life? (with Karen Dillon and James Allworth), the ROI of work is immediately apparent. For many top performers, the idea of dialing back on work is also disturbing because they fear it will torpedo their career.

Christensen 12

Christensen Gilbert Short-term Long-term 12

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 16, 2012

Communities of practice, where they share a common career or field of business, will extend your offer because it extends their expertise (like McAfee mavens ). Many of you know of Clay Christensen's iconic work the Innovators Dilemma. Their business model allows them to persistently review "what's the next big thing" and adjust.

Christensen 15

Christensen Business Model Decentralization Innovation 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 20, 2013

In a world of layoffs, outsourcing, and industry disruption, the only "career insurance" you can get is through figuring out the answer to one particular question: how can you make yourself truly valuable professionally? But those paths, the ones you learned about in your career offices aren''t the only ones afforded to you.

Advice 10

Advice Learning-by-Doing Career Open-book 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 11, 2013

When I suggested to Clayton Christensen that we partner with Hatkoff to create the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards , Clay’s response was : I trust you Whitney. She loved her job, and with a background in public affairs in communications had been successful in both international business and management roles. Innovation'

Innovation 9

Innovation Christensen Decisionmaking CTO 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 19, 2012

My own publisher, HBS Press, published two the very same month as my book — one of them co-authored by heavyweight Clay Christensen. Ask for the keys to career success and you'll get logical explanations, recommendations, pathways and approaches. Your organization, career, even life can change in a single moment.

Succession 16

Succession Diversity Open-book Innovation 16

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 23, 2015

Many of the most common missteps we see companies make would fit nicely in Steve Kerr’s management classic , “The folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B.” But inside most companies, working on something that “fails” commercially carries significant stigma, if not outright career risk.

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Six Sigma Constraint 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 8, 2013

And it''s not just behaviors in the workplace that Lean In takes this approach — it''s in career management, too. There is far more to life than climbing a career ladder, including raising children, seeking personal fulfillment, contributing to society, and improving the lives of others."

Career 8

Career Long-term Christensen Advice 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2012

In fact, one of my clients recently asked me, not at all unkindly, "What drives so many Mormons to be management thought-leaders?" Certainly, it is interesting to note how many Mormons have played an active role in shaping modern management theory. She took me by surprise when she listed quite a number off the top of her head.

Management 8

Management Covey Ulrich Christensen 8