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A lawsuit seeks to disrupt the guru of disruption.

A former employee of an investment firm run by Harvard professor Clayton Christiansen, famous for his theories about disruptive innovation in business, has sued Christensen, his son and the Christensens' investment fund.

Attorneys for Shawn E. Cox allege in the federal court lawsuit that he left Massachusetts-based Disruptive Innovation GP LLC for a job in Utah in 2013 after he had earned a 6 percent ownership stake. 

In 2015, Christensen told Cox he wanted to buy Cox's ownership units but the firm never provided financial information to Cox so he could value his share, the lawsuit says.

Later, Cox was told he no longer had an ownership interest in the company but then was offered $520,408, but his renewed request for financial information to value the shares was refused, the complaint says.

The suit claims the fair market value of Cox's 6 percent is more than $14 million. It asks for that amount plus $5 million for other damages as well as attorney fees and other expenses.

Scott Ford, an attorney for Disruptive Innovation GP, LLC, and Clayton Christensen, and Matthew Christensen, said in an email that the "claims asserted by Mr. Cox are without merit, and we anticipate filing counterclaims as a result of the wrongful conduct on the part of Mr. Cox, who was a fund operations employee."

Christensen is the author of "The Innovator's Dilemma," which lays out his research into why some companies don't respond well to technological advances that threaten their product lines.

Christensen was named the most influential business management thinker in the world in 2011 and 2013 by Thinkers50, an organization that produces the rankings. The "Innovator's Dilemma" has been named one of the most important books about business.

Christensen is the Kim B. Clark professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

Cox was employed by Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm. It manages Christensen's Disruptive Innovative Fund, L.P. and Disruptive Innovation Offshore Fund, L.P., which has Disruptive Innovation GP as their general partner.

About 85 percent of the funds value comes from an investment in Coupang, an ecommerce company in Seoul, South Korea, the lawsuit says.