Companies spend more than $3 trillion on acquisitions every year. Between 70% and 90% of them fail to deliver the value their buyers expected. That failure rate has held steady for decades.

Clayton Christensen proposed an explanation. There are two fundamentally different types of acquisition. One buys resources to plug into existing operations. The other buys a way of operating. Each requires a different integration approach, a different price logic, and a different governance structure after closing.

Most acquirers do not make this distinction as clearly, misclassify the deal type, select the wrong integration approach, and destroy precisely what made the target valuable. Depending on the mistake, this could lead to overpayment... or underpayment.

The framework Christensen proposed remains one of the most cited in the M&A  ...