Resource-Process-Values Framework

The Resource-Process-Values (RPV) Framework is a model developed by Clayton Christensen to explain why organizations with abundant resources, talented people, and strong track records systematically fail to capitalize on disruptive innovations. The framework argues that an organization's capacity for change is determined not by its resources — what it has — but by its processes and values — how it works and what it prioritizes.

Resources are the most flexible element: cash, talent, technology, brand, and physical assets can be reallocated, hired, or sold. Processes are the patterns of interaction and coordination that transform resources into products and services: the way the firm develops products, makes decisions, and allocates capital. Processes are less flexible than resources because they are embedded in routines, training, and organizational culture. Values are the least flexible element: the criteria by which the firm decides what opportunities to pursue and which to ignore. Values are rigid because they are the product of the firm's history, its business model, and its relationship with its most profitable customers.

The RPV Framework explains why disruption is so difficult to respond to from inside an incumbent firm. The firm's values are calibrated to serve its existing customers with its existing products. A disruptive opportunity — by definition — serves a different customer with a different product at a lower margin. The opportunity is invisible not because the firm lacks resources to pursue it but because its processes and values make it unattractive. The firm is not stupid; it is structurally blind.

The framework connects to broader theories of institutional inertia, path dependence, and institutional blindness. It suggests that organizational failure is rarely a resource problem and almost always a configuration problem: the resources are present, but the processes and values that would deploy them effectively are missing or misaligned.

The RPV Framework is Christensen's most underappreciated contribution. Everyone talks about disruption; almost no one talks about the processes and values that make disruption invisible to the very people who could prevent it. The framework is not a management tool. It is a diagnostic for structural blindness — and most firms that apply it discover they are already blind.