Dr. Clayton M. Christensen's Life

Harvard Business School’s professor Dr. Clayton M. Christensen was asked by the graduating class to give some advice on how to apply his principles and thinking to their personal lives, not their career. Dr. Christensen shared his experience with the students regarding how he could find meaning in his own life by telling them some real-life examples with various theories and models. Dr. Christensen would not tell them what to think, but how to think. This would let people answer their questions insightfully. Later he asked his students to use those models and theories on themselves and answer three questions: How can they be sure that they will be happy in their career, how they can be sure that their relationships with spouse and family will become an enduring source of happiness, and how to live a life of integrity?
How can they be sure that they will be happy in their career, the …show more content…
Dr. Christensen states that at times people engage with marginal cost principle in their personal lives when they have to choose between right and wrong. The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems appealingly low. Dr. Christensen supports the statement with an example that once he was in a basketball team with his best friends, which was qualified to final four in the NCAA tournament. Later, the final game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday, which was not acceptable for him as he had committed to himself that he would never play basketball on Sundays, so he went to the coach and explained the issue, and then to his teammates. Every one of the team said, “You’ve got to play. Can’t you break the rule just this one time?” After all this, he decided not to play and stand on his commitments. Dr. Christensen ended the story by adding, “Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that