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July–AuGust 2010 reprinT r1007B

How Will You Measure Your Life?
Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career. by Clayton M. Christensen

How Will You Measure Your Life?
Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career.

[ By

C l ay t o n M . C h r i s t e n s e n

]

EditOR’s NOtE: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success. The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s gradu-

ating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR.

2 Harvard Business Review July–August 2010

CoPyRIgHT © 20104 HARvARd BUSIneSS SCHool PUBlISHIng CoRPoRATIon. All RIgHTS ReSeRved.

foR aRtIcle RepRInts call 800-988-0886 oR 617-783-7500, oR vIsIt hbr.org

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel.
He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon
Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have

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