Clayton M. Christensen, best-selling author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, with a joint appointment in the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups.

Professor Christensen’s research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and how to create new growth markets. Through co-founding Innosight, a management consulting and training firm based near the Harvard Business School in Watertown, Massachusetts, Christensen and his colleagues sought to make practical the theories of disruption by focusing on problems of strategy, innovation and growth. Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation are practiced and implemented today through the company’s work with clients ranging from Proctor & Gamble to General Motors to Credit Suisse.

Professor Christensen holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University (1977), where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. He was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Christensen has founded three successful companies. The first, CPS Corporation, is an advanced materials manufacturing company that he founded in 1984 with several MIT professors. The second, Innosight, was founded by Christensen with the company’s current chairman, Mark Johnson, in 2000. Innosight Capital, the third firm, was launched in 2005. From 1979 to 1984 he worked with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 1982 Professor Christensen was named a White House Fellow, and served as assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole.

Professor Christensen became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in 1992. He is author or co-author of five books: “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (1997), which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book published in 1997; “The Innovator's Solution” (2003), also a New York Times best seller; and “Seeing What’s Next” (2004). In addition, he has edited two case books on innovation: “Innovation and the General Manager” (1999) and “Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation,” 4th edition (2004). He presently is completing two books that examine the problems of our healthcare and public education systems through the lenses of his theories. These also will show how the problems in these industries can be resolved.

In 2008, Professor Christensen will debut two timely books that apply his theories to some of the most significant topics of our day: education and healthcare. The first release, “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,” will outline the core problems within the America’s public educational system and offer disruptive innovation as a solution. “Diagnosing the Disease,” a working title, will examine America’s healthcare system and explain why disruptive innovation is needed to make medical care affordable and accessible for all.

Professor Christensen's writings have won a number of additional awards, including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute of Management Sciences; the Production and Operations Management Society's William Abernathy Award for the best paper in the management of technology; the Newcomen Society’s award for the best paper in business history; and the 1995 and 2001 McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.