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    Harvard professor Clayton M Christensen is my idol: Adobe's Umang Bedi

    Synopsis

    Clayton Christensen — widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading thinkers on innovation — is an inspiration for Umang Bedi.

    ET Bureau
    Name: Umang Bedi, managing director, South Asia, Adobe Systems India

    Idol: Clayton M Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and author

    His influence on the business world has been profound. Not surprisingly, Clayton Christensen — widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading thinkers on innovation — was an inspiration for Umang Bedi. During a recent conversation with ETPanache, Bedi spoke about his "thrilling experience" of meeting Christensen on the completion of his post doctoral degree at the Harvard Business School.

    "I have been following his work at Harvard Business School and to my mind, he's (Christensen) the god of disruptive innovation. He helps you realise how warped your values and strategies are. You may say your strategy in life is to do a set of things, but your actions don't really correspond with that," says Bedi, on his learnings from Christensen.

    During their interaction, Bedi states a conversation where Christensen humbly asked him three questions. "By the time I had answered those questions I was totally shaken up. His first question was, "What was the most important thing in your life?" I answered, my family — wife and my four-year-old daughter. "That's awesome," he said. Then he asked how much time I spend with them not watching a screen or discussing logistics. I didn't have an answer to that. I said, "Maybe, 10 minutes a day."

    He asked again, "It's the most important priority in your life, and how much time in those 60 minutes a week, do you spend not giving them an instruction or criticising?" I thought, I am probably doing it half that time. So, he said, "Is your family really your biggest priority, or are you making it sound good?"

    Bedi believes Christensen is one man who has changed the way he looks at things. Bedi recommends Christensen's book "How Would You Measure Your Life?", which he has read four times.

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