Clayton Christensen, MBA, DBA (Deceased)
Prior Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Cambridge, MA, USA

Clayton Christensen was the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He was regarded as one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth. He held a B.A. with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics 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. In 1982 Professor Christensen was named a White House Fellow, and served through 1983 as assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole. He was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992. Professor Christensen became a faculty member there in 1992, and was awarded a full professorship with tenure in 1998. He holds five honorary doctorates and an honorary chaired professorship at the Tsinghua University in Taiwan.

Christensen served as a director of many companies, and has advised the executives of scores of the world’s major corporations. Christensen was also an experienced entrepreneur, having started four successful companies. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, in 1984 he and three MIT professors founded CPS Technologies, which has become a leading developer and manufacturer of products from high-technology materials. Professor Christensen is the best-selling author of eight books and more than a hundred articles. The Innovator’s Dilemma received the Global Business Book Award as the best business book of the year (1997); and in 2011 The Economist named it as one of the six most important books about business ever written. Professor Christensen was featured in the Discovery Channel documentary Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami: Bring Your Best Board along with a number of others participating in the Innovators Network as he had been a tireless champion for values grounded leadership. Professor Christensen’s theories provide a number of foundational elements the Med Tac Bystander Care Certification Program and the Emerging Threats Community of Practice led by GPSF members.