Clayton Christensen, Award-Winning Author, Featured on District Leader's Podcast

Clayton M. Christensen, award-winning author of Disrupting Class, is featured this month on DistrictLeadersPodcast.org, a web site that provides an easily accessible forum for school superintendents and other educational leaders. In the podcast, he shares insights on the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions from his book, which was named one of the "10 Best Innovation and Design Books in 2008" by BusinessWeek and the best Human Capital book of the year in the Strategy + Business Best Books of 2008.

In an interview with Arthur Griffin, Jr., senior vice president of McGraw-Hill Education's Urban Advisory Resource, Christensen discusses how urban schools can make students feel successful and give them the satisfaction needed to motivate them to achieve. "Education is not a job that students are trying to get done, so if we improve education, it's not necessarily going to do anything. However, if we use education to make students feel successful, that is going to motivate them to try, which in turn will improve urban schools," Christensen said.

Christensen has become famous for his expertise on disruptive innovation, a framework which describes the process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves "up market," eventually displacing established competitors. He is widely sought after as a speaker, advisor and board member. His research has been applied to national economies, start-up and Fortune 50 companies, and to early and late stage investing.

His seminal book The Innovator's Dilemma, which first outlined his disruptive innovation frameworks, received the Global Business Book Award for the Best Business Book of the Year in 1997. In addition, the book was a New York Times bestseller, translated into more than 10 languages, and sold in more than 25 countries. Christensen also is the two-time recipient of the McKinsey Award for the Harvard Business Review's best article.

Christensen has recently focused his innovation lens on education and health care. He is currently the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. To further examine and apply his frameworks to the social sector, Christensen also founded the Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank, in 2008.

About DistrictLeadersPodcast.com

The District Leader's Podcast team is passionate about education and deeply committed to student success. The site serves as a valuable tool for anyone interested in improving America's schools. District Leader's Podcast is sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education's Urban Advisory Resource comprising former education leaders and other experts with extensive experience in managing large school districts. It is produced by TeachersPodcast.org, a professional development resource for educators with an audience of more than 4.3 million listeners. The podcast is currently listed on iTunes as "New and Notable" for K-12 Education.

The only national podcast created expressly for district leaders, District Leader's Podcast features topics that include: Making the Tough Decisions, Improving Student Performance, Urban Education, Trends in Education and Leadership.

Visit www.DistrictLeadersPodcast.com for more information.

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SOURCE: McGraw-Hill Education; DistrictLeadersPodcast.org; TeachersPodcast.org

CONTACT: Tom Stanton of McGraw-Hill Education, +1-212-904-3214,
tom_stanton@mcgraw-hill.com; or Melina Metzger of Paul Werth Associates,
+1-614-224-8114 Ext. 266, mmetzger@paulwerth.com

Web Site: http://www.mheducation.com/
http://www.districtleaderspodcast.org/