The Christensen Institute
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 AI Story
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. "Can it be part of a disruptive innovation? You bet. But much more important than just the AI technology in determining whether something is disruptive is the business model in which the AI is used." This reframing has shaped the institute's subsequent work and influenced broader business and academic discussions of AI strategy.
Thomas Arnett's research has applied the framework to AI companies themselves. His work on OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI maps how capital markets, revenue models, governance structures, and competitive pressures shape AI company behavior. The key insight: the future of AI will be determined not primarily by technological capability or stated corporate intentions but by incentives — who funds AI companies, who their customers are, how competition works, and which trade-offs organizations are rewarded or punished for making.
In education, the institute has applied Christensen's frameworks to the disruption of traditional schooling by AI-powered tutoring, personalized learning, and content delivery systems. Its work extends Christensen's earlier book Disrupting Class (2008), which predicted that modular learning systems would eventually disrupt the industrial-age classroom. The institute has argued that generative AI accelerates this disruption by reducing the marginal cost of high-quality personalized content delivery to near zero, while simultaneously making the judgment-development function of education more valuable and more clearly distinct.
In healthcare, the institute continues the work Christensen began in The Innovator's Prescription (2009), applying the framework to telemedicine, AI-powered diagnostics, and value-based care models. The institute has also expanded into global development through Efosa Ojomo's research on market-creating innovations in emerging economies — work directly relevant to the new-market disruption dimension of the AI transition.
Origin
The institute was founded as Innosight Institute in 2007 and renamed the Clayton Christensen Institute in 2013 after Christensen's theories had achieved broad recognition. It has become the primary institutional custodian of Christensen's frameworks since his death in 2020.
Key Ideas
Distinguishing sustaining and disruptive AI. The institute's central analytical contribution to the AI discourse.
Incentives over intentions. AI company behavior is determined by incentive structures rather than by leadership aspirations.
Framework applied across domains. Education, healthcare, global development, and emerging technology each addressed through the disruption lens.
Institutional continuity after Christensen. The institute has maintained and extended the framework under Ann Christensen's leadership.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Michael B. Horn, "Is Generative AI Actually Disruptive?" (Christensen Institute, 2024)
- Thomas Arnett, "AI Companies and the Incentives That Shape Them" (Christensen Institute, 2025)
- Efosa Ojomo, "Market-Creating Innovation in the AI Era" (Christensen Institute, 2024)
- Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson, Disrupting Class (McGraw-Hill, 2008)