A Quote by Clayton M. Christensen

When an entrant competitor attacks the low end of any market, the rational reaction of the incumbent firms is to abandon rather than defend it - because the low end is the least profitable of their possible investments.

Clayton M. Christensen

Quote Topics

Abandon Any Attacks Because Competitor Defend End Incumbent Investments Least Low Market Possible Profitable Rather Rational Reaction Than

Quote Author

Clayton M. Christensen
American - Author
Born: April 6, 1952

I remember listening to 'Low End Theory': I had been kicked out of high school. I was in GED school in the LES, and all I could do was listen to 'Low End Theory.' I was in a strange time in my life, and 'Low End Theory' kind of defined that time.

El-P

How could Digital's collapse be so precipitous? It's because, in many ways, financial performance data is misleading. As you move up to the top of the market, you're getting rid of the less profitable products at the low end and adding business with more attractive margins at the high end. The rate of unit volume growth might be tapering off as you pursue these smaller markets, but your margins actually look better. So Wall Street rewards your stock price until you hit the ceiling.

Clayton Christensen

In my opinion, the greatest misconception about the market is the idea that if you buy and hold stocks for long periods of time, you'll always make money. Let me give you some specific examples. Anyone who bought the stock market at any time between the 1896 low and the 1932 low would have lost money. In other words, there's a 36 year period in which a buy-and-hold strategy would have lost money. As a more modern example, anyone who bought the market at any time between the 1962 low and the 1974 low would have lost money.

Victor Sperandeo

In the Great Depression, employment was not low because investment was low. Employment and investment were low because labor market institutions and industrial policies changed in a way that lowered normal employment.

Edward C. Prescott

Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from.

Clayton M. Christensen

I grew up very poor, so I learned how to stretch a dollar. It's nice to combine high-end with low-end or whatever-end you want.

Azita Ghanizada

Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, one might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market.

Rebecca West

High prices can be the result of speculation, and maybe plunging prices can be attributed to the end of speculation, but low prices over time aren't caused by speculation. That's oversupply, mainly by Saudi Arabia flooding the market with low-priced oil to discourage rival oil producers, whether it's Russian oil or American fracking.

Michael Hudson

I'm obsessed with low end, its kind of my religion. In a way it has given me a chance to explore more than I have in any other project.

Max Richter

Outperforming the market with low volatility on a consistent basis is an impossibility. I outperformed the market for 30-odd years, but not with low volatility.

George Soros

Africa is not for the weak-hearted: infrastructure issues are there. The middle class is absent in most of the countries. We have to cater to the low end of the market to grow.

Sunil Mittal

Socialized medicine allows a nation to exclude a U.S. product from its market if the U.S. firm does not make generous enough price concessions. Accordingly, what has developed is a system within which U.S. firms make large profits on new drugs in the U.S. market, but very low profits on sales everywhere else.

Kevin Hassett

One of my strengths is I have a pretty even temperament. I don't get too high when it's high and I don't get too low when it's low. And what I found during the course of the presidency, and I suppose this is true in life, is that investments and work that you make back here sometimes take a little longer than the 24-hour news cycle to bear fruit.

Barack Obama

The New Finance focused on the market's major systematic mistake. In failing to appreciate the strength of competitive forces in a market economy, it over estimates the length of the short run. In doing so, it overreacts to records of success and failure for individual companies, driving the prices of successful firms too high and their unsuccessful counterparts too low.

Robert Haugen

It's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together.