Editor’s note: Clayton Christensen died on Jan. 23, 2020. Here we present some of his seminal HBR pieces through an adaptation of the introduction to the book The Clayton M. Christensen Reader.

Clayton M. Christensen is best known for his theory of disruptive innovation, in which he warns large, established companies of the danger of becoming too good at what they do best. To grow profit margins and revenue, he observes, such companies tend to develop products to satisfy the demands of their most sophisticated customers. As successful as this strategy may be, it means that those companies also tend to ignore opportunities to meet the needs of less sophisticated customers — who may eventually form much larger markets. An upstart can therefore introduce a simpler product that is cheaper and thus becomes more widely adopted (a “disruptive innovation”). Through incremental innovation, that product is refined and moves upmarket, completing the disruption of the original company.

Christensen’s work on disruption is nuanced and often misunderstood. Not every hugely innovative technology is “disruptive” (though you wouldn’t know that from the way journalists and tech enthusiasts throw the word around). Not every start-up will beat the incumbent. Not every big company is going to be disrupted. Reading Christensen’s original Harvard Business Review articles on disruption yields a more accurate picture of his theory and how businesses can prepare for and overcome the threat he describes.

Much of that picture comes from the case studies embedded in each article. Christensen was a deliberate storyteller, and his business examples serve as parables; compelling and memorable, they give readers the context to apply his ideas to their own industries. Those who know Christensen’s work are familiar with the success of steel minimills (disrupters!) and the fate of Digital Equipment Corporation (disrupted!); they know what goes into the creation of the best milk shake (a product with a job to do) and why the iPod was the MP3 player that really took off (an innovative business model). In “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Christensen reflects on his use of storytelling to persuade one powerful CEO to change strategy and go to the bottom of the market. “If I’d been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I [told him the story of the minimills and] taught him how to think.” Christensen’s articles do the same for readers.

Here we’ve collected the most essential and influential of Christensen’s HBR articles. In them, Christensen examines many different pieces of the disruption puzzle. Understanding those pieces is critical for strategy teams, product development units, and organizational leaders. They include:

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