Clayton Christensen

You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.

...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.

Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.

Focus is scary—until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development.

Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.

Whenever we have thanked these men and women for what they have done for us, without exception they have expressed gratitude for having the chance to help - because they grew as they served.

Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.

You can't find returns in investments you haven't made.

Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.

How can you make sense of the future when you only have data about the past?

Christine and I haven't raised our children. A whole community of selfless Christians has contributed to helping them become faithful, competent adults.

I'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.

Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That's not management, that's deal making. Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession.

This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.

Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something and it doesn't work and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet. Ultimately you become commercially successful.