By Jamie O’Banion
For the last 10 years, Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen has researched history”s most successful companies, in an attempt to understand why they failed.
At Tuesday”s Devotional, July 22, he will discuss his findings and their application to running the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Devotional will take place at 11:05 a.m. in the de Jong Concert Hall.
“Good management causes companies to fail,” said Christensen. He believes the very thing that causes a company to be successful can also sew the seeds of failure.
Christensen will discuss how innovative start-up companies can learn to dominate the industry leader, and he will give important insights into why certain industries are unable to grow in our economy.
One of the goals of his devotional is to teach BYU students how they can use these problems to enhance their church leadership skills.
He said some of the things that cause companies to fail are actually at work within the church today.
“It is my hope that when [students] leave BYU and become leaders in their ward and stake they will know what [problems] to look for and how to deal with these problems when they arise,” Christensen said.
Clayton Christensen is an area authority in the North American, Northeast area.
He graduated from BYU in 1975 in Economics, and his wife, Christine Christensen, graduated from BYU in 1974.
Christensen was awarded a Rhodes scholarship from Oxford University, where he received his M.PHIL, and continued on to Harvard Business School where he received his MBA and doctorate.
