These corporate giants were so focused on doing the very things that had been taught for generations at the nation’s top business schools, he wrote, that they were blindsided by small, fast-moving, innovative companies that were able to enter markets nimbly with disruptive products and services and grab large chunks of market share. By laying out a blueprint for how executives could identify and respond to these disruptive forces, Professor Christensen, himself an entrepreneur and former management consultant, struck a chord with high-tech corporate leaders.

Image The Economist called Professor Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” one of the six most important business books ever written. Credit... Harpers Business Books

Andy Grove, then the chief executive of Intel, said at an industry conference about a year after “The Innovator’s Dilemma” was published that it was the most important book he had read in 10 years. That praise helped make the book a best seller (it had sold more than a half-million copies by 2007), and Professor Christensen a marquee name in the business world.

A Rhodes scholar who had studied econometrics at Oxford University and a graduate of the Harvard Business School, Professor Christensen joined the school’s faculty in 1992. A former basketball star (he stood 6-foot-8) as well as an affable academic, he focused as much on a life well lived as he did on his management theories.

A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he incorporated his musings on religion into his academic work, especially after learning that he had lymphoma in 2010. Soon after that, he had a stroke, which forced him to relearn how to speak, but he remained an active faculty member, mentoring students and developing popular curriculum offerings.

“Through his research and teaching,” Professor Nohria wrote, “he fundamentally shaped the practice of business and influenced generations of students and scholars.”