This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.

Core competence, as it is used by many managers, is a dangerously inward-looking notion. Competitiveness is far more about doing what customers value than doing what you think you're good at.

People still cling to this belief that innovation is just random and unpredictable. But if you look closely, there are some real patterns. The companies that recognize and take advantage of those patterns have the real opportunity to create competitive advantage.

We don't hire ministers or priests to teach and care for us. This forces us to teach and care for each other - and in my view, this is the core of Christian living as Christ taught it.

Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to "prove" their theory, and then they write "one size fits all" books. The message is, "If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too."

If the theory accurately predicts what they [scientists] see, it confirms that it's a good theory. If they see something that the theory didn't lead them to believe, that's what Thomas Kuhn calls an anomaly. The anomaly requires a revised theory - and you just keep going through the cycle, making a better theory.

The personal computer was a disruptive innovation relative to the mainframe because it enabled even a poor fool like me to have a computer and use it, and it was enabled by the development of the micro processor. The micro processor made it so simple to design and build a computer that IB could throw in together in a garage. And so, you have that simplifying technology as a part of every disruptive innovation. It then becomes an innovation when the technology is embedded in a different business model that can take the simplified solution to the market in a cost-effective way.