Clayton Christensen: Still disruptive


You have not had an easy time of it over the last few years

It is incredibly brave to start lecturing again


You have written much about how technology will disrupt higher education


What does this mean for universities?

Is this something you lament?
It makes me sad because these institutions have a lot of meaning for a lot of people. But on the other side, we should celebrate. People will be so much better served. Because learning becomes a process that means they can learn for their lifetime and get skills for new jobs and it will be customised to their needs. It is hard to argue when you think about the customer

But should the university system just be about the customer? Isnt it also about creating knowledge? You wouldn't have had your papers published if Harvard was only focused on its students
Universities are not consistent in their thinking about this problem. If you go back a couple of hundred years, the Harvard professors came to the strange conclusion that they didn’t have enough content to teach. They needed more content because they had been using the bible as the textbook for the last 150 years and the world moved on and they needed more material to teach. So to find more material, they decided to integrate backwards and invite faculty to research to create knowledge that could be taught. That's not the case today. We are awash in content that needs to be taught, yet the vast majority of colleges give a large portion of their faculties’ salaries to fund research.


Given your research on innovation, I am surprised to hear you say that. Surely innovation can come from unlikely places, including esoteric research?

Readers' comments



Imran Q

This guy is amazing. Going from professor to learning each word to lecturing at Oxford again shows me how his initial success was largely a function of his own perseverance. Hats off to you sir.

As to the article, I thought his comments on great research being in the intersection of different departments very telling. Essentially it is the tradeoff between depth and breadth. Can we leave the depth to research universities, and leave the breadth to businesses? Google represents an intersection of a variety of different research: economics (adwords), graph theory, computer science, social interaction, human psychology.

Also universities will likely regress to their old model of teaching knowledge to those who want to learn it in their own right. Not for those seeking a vocation using liberal arts: like the history grad working in finance. Its the industrial era thinking, and yearning for employment rather than becoming the employer, that led to the masses pushing their youth to four-year colleges.


What a blessing it is to see Clayton Christensen pressing on in the face of most difficult circumstances, and continuing to share his insights and perspective on disruptive innovation. What an important interview on so many levels. Wow!


I wonder if Christensen would have become an original thinker if he was exposed to the cookie cutter training via exposure to 'content'. Or maybe his education exposed him to a diversity of views and taught him to think and innovate for himself through, oh I don't know, a number of learning activities designed and supported by experienced pedagogues and content experts as well as his peers (and I do not mean MCQs here - and perhaps not even essays). Some of them might have even been doing and teaching their original research...

Sophie Touzé

Great and powerful explanation on process of great new ideas emerging and why universities cannot go on as if MOOCs and Open Education never existed. Thanks !


Excellent points. I have personal experience with the changes in MBA delivery that he describes. My school (University of Colorado) used Harvard Business School material weekly, even though we were not attending Harvard. In addition, CU's Professional MBA program offered every single course online in case students had work conflicts, travel requirements, etc. Many of our professors came from the private sector (attorneys, executives, etc) who lectured part time. The cost was a fraction of that of traditional business schools and this facilitated reimbursement by my employer. That is the future.


A very intelligent and thoughtful article. Christensen shows much determination - that is success.



Products and events


Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the headlines

