The Forum for Growth and Innovation is a research project guided by Professor Clayton Christensen, the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration and one of the world’s top experts on growth and innovation. The goal of the Forum is to discover, develop, and disseminate robust, accessible theory in the areas of innovation and general management. We judge our success by our ability to shape debate among students of management theory and to make a difference in the lives of general managers worldwide by bringing useful new approaches to bear on their most critical growth and innovation challenges.
Clay’s Take:
“We launched the Forum for Growth and Innovation with the goal of pushing innovation and growth research in new directions, all while keeping an eye on the practical implications for people running actual companies. Our goal is not so much to teach our community what to think, but rather to continually better understand how to think.”
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Research
The purpose of the Forum’s research activities is to develop actionable, prescriptive theory that can guide general managers in their most critical growth and innovation decisions. There is a growing need for general managers to sift through the many sources of information and advice available to them to identify the theories that can serve as a reliable guide for future action. Much academic research is only descriptive in nature, identifying the factors that correlate with success rather than those that cause it. The Forum aims to re-invigorate general management research by following a proven process for building sound theory, refining it through collaboration with practitioners, and then distributing it to a broad audience.
Each year, the Forum invites a few highly qualified MBA graduates to engage in a year-long residency program. Associates collaborate with Professor Christensen on theory development intended for publication in Harvard Business Review and other leading business journals.