Renowned American academic, business consultant, Clayton Christensen, has passed on at the age of 67. According to his brother Carlton, Christensen died Thursday evening of complications from cancer treatment in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Christensen coined the word “disruptive innovation”, having introduced the concept in the Harvard Business Review in 1995. The theory and the term became a famous business phrase in 1997 when he published “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”
Christensen was a Harvard professor, a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, a venture capital firm, and Innosight, a management consulting and investment firm specializing in innovation.
In 2012, after Thinkers50 ranked him the world’s most influential living management thinker for the first time, the New Yorker published an 8,800-word profile titled, “When Giants Fail.”
“We were heartbroken to learn today of the passing of Clayton Christensen,” said Nitin Nohria, dean of the Harvard Business School, in a statement shared Friday with the Deseret News. “His loss will be felt deeply throughout our community. Clayton’s brilliance and kindness were equally evident to everyone he met, and his legacy will be long-lasting. Through his research and teaching, he fundamentally shaped the practice of business and influenced generations of students and scholars.”
Michael Horn, who co-founded the Clayton Christensen Institute, said it would remain committed to his legacy and continue his work.
“Clay leaves behind an incredible tree of researchers and acolytes and practitioners who will continue to not only spread what he learned in his lifetime but also continue to improve the theory, ultimately, and not only that theory but the other theories that Clay developed,” Horn said. “Clay was someone who believed that a theory was something you could continue to improve as more information and more understanding of the world came into view, and ideas shouldn’t stand still, in effect. It was more important get truth than be right. He leaves behind a whole slew of people, not just at the institute, but around the world, like Bob Moesta (CEO of the Re-Wired Group), Scott Anthony (Innosight), Clark Gilbert and others who will continue to perfect the ideas and put them into action.”
His final years of his life were marked by health concerns. In 2007, he suffered a heart attack. In late 2009, he was diagnosed with terminal follicular lymphoma, though doctors later discovered it was not terminal.
