In the two-week period following the 2016 election, the stock market rallied by 1.35%. Is this normal following a presidential election? We dug into the data to find out.

To do this, we tracked the closing value of the S&P 500 stock index on election day, then the closing value two weeks later, for a period from 1952 to 2016 (for 1952 to 1980, we used the last day the market was open before election day). Here are our results:

During the period, the average two-week performance of the market after the election of a Republican was 0.29%, and the average two-week performance of the market after the election of a Democrat was -0.81%.

What does this tell us? Well, for most elections, other than entertainment value, surprisingly little. The value of the stock market at any given time is a forward-looking measure, meaning that investors attempt to take into account all available information when making pricing decisions. That means that the likely outcome of an election has already been “priced in” to the market price. This is especially true in elections that aren’t especially close – a good example is 2008, for which the change in the S&P 500 is more likely related to prevailing market conditions (the worsening financial crisis) than any repricing of stocks based on a “surprise” election outcome.

The election of 2016, however, was a surprise outcome, and so we should expect that most of the price shift might be related to the reaction to the result. In this case, the market feels that Donald Trump’s policies will likely favor American businesses, leading to an increase in the value of those businesses by approximately 1.35%. This change in expectation is not uniform, however. Banks have done exceptionally well (Bank of America is up 7%; Goldman Sachs is up 6%; Citigroup is up 5%), which is likely a result of Republican promises to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulation; whereas gun-makers have fared much more poorly (Smith and Wesson is down 7%; Sturm, Ruger & Co is down 9%), as the market had expected consumers to “stock up” in the event of a Clinton election and is now pricing in lower future cash flows for these companies.

As in all things, stock prices are a constant game, with all participants trying to forecast future cash flows and determine what those cash flows are worth today. Incorporating new information – including events such as elections – is critical.

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Interested in gaining a toolkit for making smart financial decisions and the confidence to clearly communicate those decisions to key internal and external stakeholders?

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This article originally appeared on Fortune Insiders.

Well, that hurt. Twenty years ago, I was standing in my commander’s office as he told me in muted tones that I had not handled something well. He was a leader I really looked up to, and knowing I had disappointed him made his delivery even more painful—I almost wished he would just yell.

About an hour earlier, during a tension-filled exercise, I had told his boss, in front of probably 50 others, to keep quiet while the team I managed tried to work out a problem in preparation for an intelligence satellite launch. I was a 26-year-old Air Force captain at the time. My boss was a 40-something colonel and his boss was a 50-something senior official from the CIA. Needless to say, the CIA manager was not happy with my calling him out during an exercise. And he let my boss know it.

The thing was, I was mostly right. The CIA official had broken with established protocol and my commander conceded this. But, he correctly pointed out, I wasn’t right in how I rebuffed the senior official publicly. I had made a big mistake, one that could be career-limiting. In that moment, I had visions of being drummed out of the military, with a dishonorable discharge for my indiscretion. What should I do?

I got lucky in that moment, and followed what I’ve since learned is the best path forward in such situations. First, I conceded that I had indeed screwed up. There’s no point in fighting when you mess up; doing so makes you look petty and insecure. That reaction will stick with your boss and those around you far longer than a discreet mistake will, even if it’s a big one.

Second, I asked what I could do to remedy the situation, offering first an apology to the senior CIA official. My commander said that wouldn’t be necessary—he would handle it—but he did say that I should acknowledge to those who worked with and for me that I had messed up. Offering to make amends immediately disarms those offended and helps rebuild valuable relationships. And making such acknowledgements to those who aren’t expecting them often has an even greater effect.

Third, I recounted in my own mind what had happened and replayed a scenario in which I had acted more appropriately. This helped me internalize a mental checklist, so that if a similar situation arose again, I would handle it better.

Finally, I found a way to reference my mistake in a self-deprecating manner in the weeks after. This is a delicate balance, since being too flippant can come off as arrogant. But making light of your own flaws can make you seem more human to those you interact with.

Unlike The Doors frontman Jim Morrison, who said, “Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts,” you’ll likely have to deal with more substantial transgressions over your career. In these moments, your mistakes can feel deadly. But most of the time they’re not, and are more salvageable than you realize. Take a deep breath, and act deliberately and genuinely to make amends. You’ll live to fight another day.

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As Programming Manager for HBX Live, I oversee the development and delivery of programs via our virtual classroom. For those who are not already familiar, HBX Live was designed to reproduce the intimacy and synchronous interaction of Harvard Business School’s famed case study method in a digital environment.

Participants from around the globe can log in concurrently and join real-time, case-based sessions. In our custom-designed studio, a high-resolution video wall mimics the amphitheater-style seating of an HBS classroom, where up to 60 participants are displayed on individual screens simultaneously. 

Since I started this role, I have been approached countless times by participants, potential partners, and individuals at Harvard and other colleges and universities with the same question – what does it take to run a class in a one-of-a-kind virtual classroom?

The short answer is a lot of coffee, a lot of coordination, and an awesome team. The long answer? Keep reading for a behind-the-scenes look at a recent session.

5:30 AM – Wake Up Call / HBX Live Runs on Dunkin

Most HBX Live sessions reach learners around the world – it isn’t unusual to see 20 or more countries represented in the virtual classroom. One challenge, of course, is finding a time that works for as many time zones as possible.

In this case, it meant a very early morning (I set alarms for 5:30 AM, 5:35 AM, and 5:40 AM just in case…) to reach participants in Japan, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Australia, and a host of other nations before the end of their day. As a result, you can usually find most members of the team at the Dunkin Donuts across the street from the studio before the morning officially begins.

6:30 AM – Bringing the Virtual Studio “Online”

Even though HBX Live is part of Harvard Business School, the virtual classroom is located in a studio at WGBH, the local public broadcaster. Because our approach to producing each session borrows aspects from film and television, this location provides access to the talent necessary to support each session and the infrastructure needed to host the 60-participant video wall and other aspects of the virtual classroom.

Between sessions, we power down the video wall and collapse the set so that another program can film in the studio. When the team arrives at the studio, the classroom is offline. The first step in our process involves some heavy lifting to put everything back together again.

7:00 AM – Production Meeting

Once the studio is online, we pull the entire team (including any guests we have in the studio) together to review the rundown for the production.

Before the session, the producer reviews the outline and other materials provided by the faculty member to create a minute-by-minute breakdown of the session. This provides team the information that they need to oversee the production of the session from the control room.

7:30 AM – Faculty Meeting

After the production meeting, a member of the team meets with the faculty member for the session and review the plan for the class. At this point, we have already had multiple pre-session conversations focused on the capabilities of the studio and the faculty member’s plans for the session. We use the majority of this time to confirm important details (such as the use of polling, chat, or multimedia) to make sure that everyone is on the same page so that the HBX Live team is prepared to provide support from the control room as needed.

8:00 AM – Participant Onboarding

A half an hour before the session starts, we "open the doors" to the virtual classroom so that participants can take their seats. On the video wall in the studio, photos of each participant start to flicker and become gateways to locations around the world. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve had an opportunity to see rainforests, beaches, the skyline of New York City, and the Eiffel Tower through the webcams of individuals sharing a slice of the view from their homes or offices.

As each person connects, a member of our team takes a few moments to check in with them. As much as we appreciate the opportunity to learn more about each participant (and ask about the view), the onboarding period also serves another purpose – it provides one more chance for our team to check each person’s audio and video connection to ensure that they are able to have a productive session.

8:30 AM – Class Begins

At the end of the onboarding period, the faculty member takes the floor to start the session. While they focus on the content, the HBX Live team is working behind the scenes to make sure that all the other details are in place.

In the control room above the studio, a wall of monitors shows the feed from the webcams of all sixty participants and all six cameras on the studio floor. The producer and director keep an eye on the production rundown and watch the actions of the faculty member closely, making decisions about how to present each minute of the session to participants.

This might include switching between cameras or changing the layout to include shots from the webcams of participants who are engaging in a discussion with each other and/or the faculty member. Given the pace of discussions at Harvard Business School, the team in the control room must be incredibly fast and laser-focused on the session.

Down in the studio, a handheld camera operator moves around the floor, taking direction from the control room to capture shots of the faculty member that are outside of the scope of the mounted cameras. From the side of the stage, another member of the team monitors and controls the audio for each participant. This role is critical, as it allows HBX Live to feel more like a physical classroom than a conference call or web conference.

Participants' audio is “always on” and balanced from the studio floor. This ensures that participants can respond to cold calls in an instant instead of fumbling to unmute their device. It also means that jokes are met with laughter and particularly insightful comments with murmurs of approval (as opposed to the “wall of silence” you might experience on a conference call).

9:45 AM – Wrapping Up

After a session, the team heads down to the floor to meet with the faculty member. We take a few minutes to debrief on the session, touching base on what worked well and where there might be opportunities to approach the production differently in the future.

In a matter of minutes, we power down the video wall, turn off the cameras and microphones, and collapse the set so that the studio is available for other programming in the studio.

The next item on the agenda?

Head back to the office to get ready for another session. 

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Disruptive innovation has been a buzzword since Clayton Christensen coined it back in the mid 1990s. But with everyone discussing disruption when it comes to each new business or product that emerges, how can we distinguish between new entrants that pose a threat and those that are best ignored?

Here are four key things to remember when assessing whether the next new company is likely to disrupt your business:

1. The common understanding of disruption IS NOT disruption according to Christensen

Let’s start with the basic understanding of disruption. According to Merriam Webster, disruption is “to cause (something) to be unable to continue in the normal way: to interrupt the normal progress or activity of (something).” If this definition is applied to business, then really anything that enters a market and is successful can be seen as “disruptive.” But is this how Christensen defined the word when writing in the 1990s?

A great article by Ilan Mochari discusses the misuse of the word disruption when referring to business. As he clarifies, disruption is “what happens when the incumbents are so focused on pleasing their most profitable customers that they neglect or misjudge the needs of their other segments.” 

2. Disruption can be low-end or new-market

These differences are laid out in Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen. Low-end disruption refers to businesses that come in at the bottom of the market and serve customers in a way that is “good enough.” These are generally the lower profit markets for the incumbent and thus, when these new businesses enter, the incumbents move futher “upstream.” In other words, they put their focus on where the greater profit margins are.

New-market disruption refers to businesses that compete against non-consumption in lower margin sectors of a market. Similar to low-end disruption, the products offered are generally seen as “good enough,” and the emerging business is able to be profitable at these lower prices. The main difference between the two types of disruption lies in the fact that low-end disruption focuses on overserved customers, and new-market disruption focuses on underserved customers.

3. Christensen’s disruption is a process, rather than a product or service

When innovative new products or services – iPhone, Tesla’s electric cars, Uber, and the like – launch and grab the attention of the press and consumers, do they qualify as disruptors in their industries? Writing in Harvard Business Review, Christensen cautions us that it takes time to determine whether an innovator’s business model will succeed. He cites Netflix as an example that didn’t threaten Blockbuster at first – its DVDs-by-mail service didn’t satisfy the needs of customers who wanted to get their hands on the latest new release instantaneously – but, in shifting to an on-demand streaming model, was able to siphon away Blockbuster’s core customers before the company could stage an adequate response.

Will the next hot new launch be a flash in the pan, or a formidable competitor? Keeping a close eye on the process – is that product or service evolving its business model to better serve customers’ needs? – will help you evaluate the extent of the threat.

4. Choose your battles wisely

If you are a current incumbent and want to be on the lookout for a possibly disruptive emerging business, the clarification of what disruption is certainly helps. Every fire that is started doesn’t necessarily need to be put out, nor will it threaten your house. If you treat every fire as dangerous because someone else calls it “disruptive,” you will soon discover that it isn’t possible to put them all out, and you will waste your resources in attempting to do so. The fires you have to worry about are the ones that truly threaten you, and understanding the correct meaning and application of the word disruption certainly will help you in identifying and targeting the truly disruptive fires.

Understanding disruption is also helpful if you are looking for opportunities to start or scale your business. An understanding of disruption, coupled with Christensen’s other theory of "jobs to be done" can help you create products and services that will be desired by customers, and if you play your cards right, will be left alone by incumbents. 

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Want to learn more about disruption and other theories from Professor Christensen? Disruptive Strategy will equip you with the tools, frameworks, and intuition to make a difference.

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Past HBX CORe participant Marc Zavarella spoke to us about his transition from the military to Columbia University, as well as his plans to pursue a career in medicine.

What role did you serve in the military?

I was an Airborne Infantryman stationed with the 173^rd Airborne and deployed to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I was also part of an experimental team engaging in counter-insurgency asymmetric warfare to protect the construction of new infrastructure.

Why did you decide to transition out of the military?

Initially, I intended to transition to an officer from the infantry as I enlisted with a college education. However, during my deployment, I applied to several highly-ranked schools and received positive replies. Although my Commander gave me the keys to any avenue I could dream of pursuing in the military, I could not refuse the offer to attend a university like Columbia. 

How did you think about your transition to the private sector?

At first, my transition to a rigorous education program proved difficult as my studying routine and memorization skills were a bit rusty, and limited resources existed for veterans transitioning to the private sector. However, since that time, a number of organizations have popped up to help transitioning veterans find employment and apply to school. Thankfully, Columbia University offered a wealth of veteran support through their in-house liaison.

What forms of education did you consider, and why did you choose HBX?

My main goals were to learn science, understand and employ the scientific process through pre-medical coursework, ready myself for the MCAT examination required for medical school applications and employment in the healthcare industry. A neurosurgical mentor of mine suggested I explore the business side of healthcare which is how I discovered HBX. He suggested that having a business skill set will be valuable as I work to move healthcare forward and deliver the best possible healthcare to patients at affordable prices. 

What was your HBX experience like?

My experience with HBX was incredible. It was a rigorous program and I highly recommend Harvard Business School's transformational pedagogical model. There were times in the program where I struggled with the material, but the collaborative framework created an incredible sense of belonging and partnership between the participants. This program's structure also drove us to ask questions and search for the answers, instead of having them presented right to us. The active learning model allowed us to better understand the material and engage with eachother in meaningful ways.

What are your plans now?

I intend to complete my healthcare management program at Columbia while I apply to medical schools. I am at a “crucible moment” as I enter a wonderful and supporting marriage and face the decision of carrying on towards medical school or fully committing to physician training. However, I am extremely excited at the possibility that medical school holds. I find myself being happiest with the idea of being a physician executive employing a cost-friendly approach to patient-centered healthcare.

What advice would you have for others beginning their transition?

I would advise all transitioning veterans to reach for the stars. Do your research and work hard on your applications. Don't be afraid to ask your superiors for a recommendation and take every move you make seriously. Research the functionality of the GI Bill and how it can help you get to where you want to go. Ask questions—if you are interested in a school, call or visit to find out more. It is okay to ask for suggestions. Lastly, don’t sell yourself short. America is the land of opportunity, and if you seek an opportunity with the heart and desire that you put into volunteering for the military – you are bound to find happiness and a fulfilling career.

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The CORe community consists of a rich and diverse group of learners. Want to learn more about other students who've participated in the program?

Let’s talk sunk costs. In business speak, a sunk cost is a payment or investment that has already been made. It can't be recovered and therefore shouldn't be a factor in decisions moving forward because no matter what, it can't be recouped. Businesses and organizations often have difficulty abandoning strategies because of the time spent developing them, even if they aren't the right choice for the company.

Imagine a company that decides to build a new factory. They already did their analyses and determined that the future benefit they will receive from the factory will outweigh the cost of construction. They pay for the factory up front and expect to earn a certain level of cash flows from the factory’s production each year. But after a few years, the factory is underperforming and cash flows are less than expected. 

A decision has to be made: should the factory be shut down or not? At this point, the initial cost of the factory is a sunk cost and cannot be recovered. The decision should only be based on the future cash flows—or the future expected benefit—of the factory compared to the value of selling the factory today, not the original cost of the factory.

However, sunk costs aren't just useful for large companies deciding whether to enter new markets or close down factories. This principle can be applied in everyday life, and understanding it may impact how you make decisions. 

Feel free to leave the baseball game if it’s raining.

Some may call you a fair weather fan, but the cost became sunk the instant you purchased your ticket. You might feel obligated to stay and stick it out if the ticket was expensive, but if leaving makes you happier, do it! Either way, you aren't getting your money back.

Don’t go to the gym just because you have an annual membership.

Working out may be advantageous to your health, but your annual membership shouldn't dictate whether you go to the gym on any given day. If you paid up front, that’s money you won’t see again—if you’d rather take a hike, watch a movie, or spend an hour trolling Snapchat, you should. Your annual membership isn’t coming back into your checking account either way. (Although, this is not to say there are no other benefits to working out.)

There's no need to clean your plate.

How many times have you been at a restaurant and felt compelled to finish your meal? What about dessert? You ordered it, so you have to enjoy it and eat as much as you can. Before you give yourself a stomach ache and ruin a perfectly enjoyable meal, let’s think about this in terms of sunk costs: you've already committed to paying for the dinner and dessert in front of you no matter how much you eat. If you are full or don’t like the taste, stop eating. It’s that simple.

Sometimes there is an emotional component to sunk costs.

Maybe you went to law school, passed the bar, started working, and then realized you hate being a lawyer. What should you do? You invested so much time, energy, and money in that degree, so it can't be worth starting over again with a new career, right? Unfortunately, these are all sunk costs, so if your end goal is your own happiness, you might need to cut your losses and refocus your energies elsewhere. 

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Interested in learning the language of business? Take HBX CORe and discover the basics of Economics for Managers, Financial Accounting, and Business Analytics.

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John Stumpf, chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Co., swears in to a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2016. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

This post is from The Harbus, the news organization of Harvard Business School. Click here to see the original article and here to learn more about Professor Sharer.

Every once in a while something happens in the business world that compels us to stop, take notice, reflect, and learn. Enron’s collapse, the financial crisis, the VW diesel emission scandal, and BP’s Macondo oil well explosion come to mind. The Wells Fargo reputation implosion unfolding now is another example, and it is full of lessons for future and current leaders. Like most truly troubling events, it is a multi-element situation that does not easily yield to a single point failure analysis. Of course CEO and board choices and behaviors are at the heart of the problem, but there are many other elements. Let’s use our HBS analysis and critical thinking skills to dissect the case and see what lessons we can take away.

First, some case facts are in order. Wells was the highest market capitalization and most successful bank in the United States. Wells weathered the 2008 crisis better than virtually all other big banks, and prided itself on being a big bank with small town focus and ethos across its many thousands of branches. The CEO is an experienced, respected, capable, and good person who has been in the job for almost a decade, and by all prior measures has done a superb job. The board has the requisite complement of CEOs, ex-government financial executives, diverse leaders, and a lead director who was the successful CEO of a large, complex public company. The company had solid financial performance and a key goal was to cross-sell the bank’s multiple products to its customer base. Cross-selling metrics were a key performance measure for branch managers and employees and central to their compensation.

Several years ago, it became known that some employees opened, without customer knowledge, fraudulent credit card accounts and in so doing received cross-selling credit. The bank discovered this fraud and over the course of several years fired nearly 5,300 employees or about two percent of the total workforce. The fraudulent activity generated millions in fees, but these were in the main small fees which were inconsequential compared to the banks $20 billion plus annual net income. No senior executive was disciplined nor was any compensation for senior executives affected. The retail branch senior executive was to retire with a full and generous retirement package that has been valued at nearly $100 million in stock and expected pension payments.

Then, things changed! The LA Times published a story, the press picked it up widely, top regulators descended and fined the bank $185 million, and the CEO was called to testify at the Senate banking committee. The CEO at first said the problem was the 5,300 bad apples and not the bank, its compensation system, or the executives in charge. At the Senate hearing, he apologized but basically stuck to his story. He was, in the words of the FT, “savaged” and left with his job in jeopardy. In haste the board then decided to claw back $41 million of his previously granted stock and $19 million from the retiring executive’s package. Some see the board’s action as too little too late and the drama continues as the CEO returns to testify in the House. Stay tuned.

How did this stunning, rapid, and steep descent happen? The first and central problem is that the CEO did not properly assess, understand, accept, and act on the root causes. Why did the bank’s internal compliance system and processes not identify, understand, and present for management review such a pervasive problem?

He should have realized the compensation system and managers were as much at fault as the individuals. Next, he held no senior person accountable including himself. He failed to understand the context in which this would be publically viewed given the deep animosity towards banks that still lingers. He did not take personal accountability and tell the board to take compensation action that had teeth. In short, he did not own the problem and did not understand how it would be viewed. Moreover, he did not take initiative to demonstrate his understanding by experiencing personally real consequences. Simply saying "I am sorry" with no consequences is infuriating to others and smacks of insincerity to any observer.

The board also failed. They also did not properly analyze the situation, push back on the CEO, and take action. The lead director and head of the compensation committee were especially delinquent. Finally, it is likely that CEO and board advisors were involved in counseling this course of action out of perhaps fears about shareholder lawsuits or catalyzing other litigation. If so, they were very short-sighted and focused on avoiding what might have been a minor economic event. This sort of possible counsel instead led to a multi-billion dollar market capitalization loss, a permanent dent in the bank’s reputation, and the possible derailment of a CEO and board. This was a totally avoidable event.

The lessons for aspiring leaders? Look hard to understand root causes. Be sure your systems and processes are alert to and able to surface and interpret patterns of data or behaviors that may signal significant problems early. Be alert to and own your part in the problem. Make sure you hold yourself and others to account in ways that are proportional to the mistake. Understand the context in terms of relevant audiences, their perspectives, and their ability to react. In the course of a career, you will likely have a chance to see if you learned these lessons. Pass the test.

In honor of two of our HBX Professors, Bharat Anand and Clay Christensen, releasing books this month, we asked HBX staff members what they are reading. The answers are as diverse as our staff itself, ranging from science fiction to baseball facts, to a portrait of a modern family.

[Photo: Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images]

This post was originally published on Fast Company.

Business schools spend a great deal of time teaching would-be entrepreneurs and managers about the differences between features and benefits and their importance. Differentiate your product by tinkering with it to make it better or cheaper. Get to know your customer so you can understand how to sell to them.

Not exactly, says Harvard Business School professor and innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen. In his new book, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice, he and coauthors Karen Dillon, Taddy Hall, and David S. Duncan says that customers don’t buy products and services as such. Instead, they’re hiring them to do a job.

At first, that may seem like a very "insider baseball" distinction. Don’t you have to get to know your customer to understand their needs? Yes and no, Christensen says.

Product Or Service For Hire

Let’s say you have a customer who has a busy and stressful week at work. On Monday, after she walks through the door at 7 p.m., she exercises. On Tuesday, she pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels and pours herself a drink. On Wednesday, she reads the Bible, and on Thursday, she uses her Xbox. If you’re trying to look at the customer’s attributes and connect the dots between these disparate activities and her overall behavior, it’s confusing. But when you realize that she’s "hiring" these various products to help her unwind, the picture becomes clearer, he explains.

"That's why you need to understand the situations that your customer finds themselves in," says Christensen. That's when they have a "job" and are more likely to buy your product, he says.

Companies that have embraced this model are able to innovate in ways that make it tough to compete. Christensen points to Airbnb as an example. The sleeping-space-for-hire company understands that customers may want to hire a hotel to do a number of jobs: to provide a room with a bed, present a suitable location for a meeting with an important client, or network with other people who are staying there. However, Airbnb is focused on providing a place where people can have a home base to sleep and not be bothered.

"When Airbnb emerged, they were focused on just one of these jobs, and they nailed it," he says.

The Benefits Of A Job Well Done

Such spot-on job performance has its benefits, the authors contend. When you have a deep understanding of the job, you can innovate more specifically to do it well. Rather than broadly guessing at what the customer might want, you can focus on innovation that addresses specific experiences they wish to have and deliver in a more focused manner. When you do that, you enjoy high levels of customer loyalty and repeat business and may even be able to command a premium price.

This offers a competitive advantage to any company that is willing to understand the job rather than the customer. For example, Amazon has turned shopping at disparate locations into a singular, streamlined experience where you can get a staggering number of products in one location and pay for them with one click. That deep understanding came from asking the right questions about the job to be done, Christensen says.

"Just in the shopping experience, if all they do is measure, ‘Did we ship it to you on time?’ That's a very different experience," he explains. Amazon took it a step further by asking, Christensen adds: "‘Did you receive it on time? What was it like to pay for the product, and how hard was it to find the product? What might I buy if I don't buy this? What else could I buy to get the same job done?'" Failure to do so could mean that businesses get better at the wrong things.

Disruption, Redux

This isn’t the first time Christensen has brought fresh thinking to the innovation arena. He coined the term "disruptive innovation" in 1995. It "describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors." He addressed the topic again in his 2011 best seller The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, and described successes and failures of companies like Intel, HP, and Honda in staying on top of their game.

Christensen, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and open about his faith, says a practice in the Mormon church was part of the inspiration for his thinking about innovation, especially "jobs for hire."

He describes Mormon services delivered by fellow church members who talk about their own experiences. During the week, members have assignments to help each other. While many people feel the desire to help others but don’t know how to do so other than writing a check, Christensen has had to dive in to understand how people need help—in essence, the job that they needed to hire someone to help with, he says. The church's role is to provide that help in a way that strengthens peoples' faith.

"I have responsibility for several other families in our congregation," explains Christensen, "and my job is to be sure that if there are things going on that the rest of us can help with, we help them."

So if there is a measure of divine inspiration in Christensen’s latest book, perhaps it's the fact that we all have fundamental jobs we need done and are looking for the best product or service to fill them. Being the best answer/hire for that job ensures loyalty, whether you're providing retail goods, a place to sleep, or connection to a higher power.

We recently invited six past CORe participants to the HBX offices to participate in an upcoming ad campaign featuring real HBX students. Between shots, undergraduate financial aid representative Jonathan Rossi sat down with us and explained how CORe helped define his future education and career goals in data analytics.

Tell us how CORe inspired you to get into data analytics.

For the past three years, I’ve been working in an undergraduate admissions office doing financial aid work. I’ve always wanted to get back to my math-oriented background so that’s part of what drove me to CORe in the first place. As I was going through CORe, the Business Analytics course really sparked my interest. I went down this path of wanting to get back into statistics and data.

How did CORe complement what you studied in college?

I mainly studied theoretical math in college, so this was a new aspect and way of applying my math background in an impactful way. In the future, I want to apply the skills I’ve learned as a data scientist or data analyst, and that was very much spurred by CORe and my experience with Business Analytics.

How has CORe inspired you to continue your learning?

I just finished doing a data science bootcamp where we covered all of the statistics that I had learned in Business Analytics, but we also went into machine learning, model building, and coding. I learned to use Python and various machine learning packages and how to apply statistical knowledge to actual problems.

I’ve actually begun to apply this at work. I work a lot with Federal Pell grants, and we’re trying to get a sense of what populations of students are getting those grants and how that shifts from year to year. I’ve also been doing a few different side projects too – using Twitter data to predict when the Red Sox would win vs. lose based on the sentiment of the tweets, things like that.

What's next for you?

I hope to leverage the knowledge I gained in CORe to ultimately pursue data science full-time and eventually go back to school for an MBA or PhD.

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The CORe community consists of students from many different backgrounds and career fields. Want to learn more about other students who've participated in the program?