His research and teaching interests center on managing innovation and creating new growth markets.

Professor Christensen holds a B.A. with highest honors in economics from Brigham Young University (1975), and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and the economics of less-developed countries from Oxford University (1977), where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar. He was awarded his DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1992.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Christensen has founded three successful companies. The first, CPS Corporation, is an advanced materials manufacturing company that he founded in 1984 with several MIT professors. The second, Innosight, is a consulting and training company focused on problems of strategy, innovation, and growth that Christensen founded with several of his former students in 2000. Innosight Capital, the third firm, was launched in 2005. From 1979 to 1984 he worked with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 1982 Professor Christensen was named a White House Fellow, and served as assistant to U.S. Transportation Secretaries Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole.

Professor Christensen became a faculty member at the Harvard Business School in 1992. He is author or co-author of five books: The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book published in 1997; The Innovator's Solution (2003), also a New York Times best seller; and Seeing What's Next (2004). In addition, he has edited two case books on innovation: Innovation and the General Manager (1999) and Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation, 4th edition (2004). He presently is completing two books that examine the problems of our healthcare and public education systems through the lenses of his theories. These also will show how the problems in these industries can be resolved.

Professor Christensen's writings have won a number of additional awards, including the Best Dissertation Award from The Institute of Management Sciences; the Production and Operations Management Society's William Abernathy Award for the best paper in the management of technology; the Newcomen Society's award for the best paper in business history; and the 1995 and 2001 McKinsey Awards for articles published in the Harvard Business Review.

Professor Christensen was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He worked as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Republic of Korea from 1971 to 1973 and speaks fluent Korean. He currently serves his church as an Area Authority Seventy, and recently published an essay about his beliefs, entitled "Why I Believe".

Professor Christensen is also extensively involved in other activities in the community. He served from 1986 to 1994 as a member of the Program Review Board and Strategic Planning Committee of the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and was a member and chairman of the board of directors of the Massachusetts Affiliate of the American Diabetes Association between 1984 and 1996. Professor Christensen was also a founding board member of the Combined Health Appeal of Northeastern Massachusetts. He was an elected member of the Town Meeting (council) in Belmont Massachusetts for eight years; served as vice-chairman of the town's personnel board; and as chairman of its long-range financial planning task force. He has served the Boy Scouts of America for 25 years as a scoutmaster, cubmaster, den leader and troop and pack committee chairman. He and his wife Christine live in Belmont, MA. They are the parents of five children.