Its actually really important that you succeed at what youre succeeding at, but that isnt going to be the measure of your life.
Clayton ChristensenIt's like in biological evolution: The population will evolve, even though individuals can't. The same thing happens in the corporate world: The population of business units within corporations evolves, even though individual business units can't. That's because the capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.
Clayton ChristensenWhen the functionality of a product or service overshoots what customers can use, it changes the way companies have to compete. When the product isn't yet good enough, the way you compete is by making better products. In order to make better products, the architecture of the product has to be interdependent and proprietary in character.
Clayton ChristensenI've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.
Clayton ChristensenIf the theory accurately predicts what they [scientists] see, it confirms that it's a good theory. If they see something that the theory didn't lead them to believe, that's what Thomas Kuhn calls an anomaly. The anomaly requires a revised theory - and you just keep going through the cycle, making a better theory.
Clayton ChristensenAt the beginning of almost every industry, the available products and services are so expensive to own and complicated to use that only people with a lot of money and a lot of skill have access to them. A disruptive technology is an innovation that simplifies the product and makes it so affordable that a whole new population of people can now have one and use it at the beginning for simple applications, and then it improves to the point that it makes the old technology obsolete.
Clayton Christensen