Clayton Christensen Quotes

My goal was to build a meaningful sports business that operates at the highest levels in the areas of business that we compete in. I have an intense desire to be successful, and I'm extremely competitive.

It's the knowledge derived from information that gives you a competitive edge.

Market growth alone doesn't give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them.

To run a successful business, you have to be tough.

The only barrier to entry you can create is to consistently build a great product.

Relentless pursuit to find a competitive edge.

It just shows you have come prepared to play and ready to execute. It doesn't give you that much comfort when it's early and you still have another two and a half to three quarters to go. You better keep playing. But it is a positive, it gives you energy and it gives you a little boost like that.

It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it. Now 30 years on The Body Shop is a multi local business with over 2.045 stores serving over 77 million customers in 51 different markets in 25 different languages and across 12 time zones. And I haven't a clue how we got here!

Successful organizations have one common central focus: Customers.

I know I'm sane I don't give a care for the crown or the shield I will not protect you or happily yield To the one who makes me come undone

You've got to win in sports - that's talent - but you've also got to learn how to remind everybody how you did win, and how often. That comes with experience.

The label's going great, because we're not idiots. We're not trying to sue everyone that downloads everything. We try to give the fans a bunch of free stuff, and then have them buy the record. Without buying the record, it doesn't support your artist. These idiots like Radiohead and Sharon Osbourne that are like, "Free Ozzfest!", "Pay what you can for a record!" - Radiohead's already got their yachts and mansions. Sharon Osbourne already has her empire.

In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? (Susan Barton)

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

What's best for business is just continue to have an entertaining product with great, interesting characters.

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do.

There are multiple ways to be externally focused that are very successful. You can be customer-focused or competitor-focused. Some people are internally focused, and if they reach critical mass, they can tip the whole company.

An important re-engineering principle is that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource everything else.

I want you to say to me right from the start, "We are here to serve customers. We're not here for me to make a lot of money. We're not here to bet on interest rates or credit spreads. We are here to serve our customers really well over a long period of time, and that's how you build a successful business." And so I want to see that, too, you know?

I did something rather innovative that my competitors didn't like: I took out a full-page advertisement in the Yellow Pages that listed an office on the east side of Cincinnati, and another office on the west side, while every other heating/air-conditioning company had only one location and one phone number. I was the citywide company. In fact, our 'westside office' was just an answering service taking telephone message. From the start we appeared to be a big company.

An organization's strategy is simply its plan for success. It's nothing more than the collection of intentional decisions a company makes to give itself the best chance to thrive and differentiate from competitors.

I'm very expressive, but I'm also a very private person. It is so hard to be private in the entertainment business. I'm really glad that I was famous and successful at the time I was because it was bad enough then in a profession which tended to eat you up and never give you any free time. But I think that the youngsters today have a really bad time from every angle.

There is no mystery about successful business.... Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you.

Don't give anything away. Never make it easy for the guys you are trying to beat.

The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.