ORGANIZATION
The Christensen Institute
The nonprofit think tank Clayton Christensen co-founded, now led by Ann Christensen, that applies the disruption framework to education, healthcare, and emerging technology — and has emerged as the leading institutional interpreter of AI through Christensen's lens.
The Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, founded in 2007 and based in Lexington, Massachusetts, is the nonprofit research organization dedicated to applying and extending Christensen's frameworks to contemporary problems. After Christensen's death in January 2020, the institute continued its work under the leadership of his daughter Ann Christensen and a team of researchers including Michael B. Horn (co-founder), Thomas Arnett, Efosa Ojomo, and others. Since 2022, the institute has become the leading institutional voice applying Christensen's frameworks to AI — distinguishing sustaining from disruptive AI applications, mapping the incentive structures shaping AI companies, and extending the framework to education, healthcare, and labor markets in the age of generative AI.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The institute's most consequential contribution to the AI discourse has been Michael B. Horn's insistence on the distinction between sustaining and disruptive AI applications. "It doesn't make much sense to talk about GenAI as being 'disruptive' in and of itself," Horn wrote.
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