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.

One of the factors that make great companies so great is that they have processes that allow them to solve difficult problems again and again. These processes have developed over time as teams have successfully wrestled with a certain type of challenge. Eventually, people begin to say, "This is just how we do something around here." The problem develops when that team then has to solve a very different set of challenges. The processes that are such strengths can be crushing liabilities.

If the technology is disruptive, on the other hand, the odds are that at the end of the transition, the leaders will have been toppled and new companies will be on top.

Almost always great new ideas don't emerge from within a single person or function, but at the intersection of functions or people that have never met before.

Most companies think of disruption as a threat. But disruptive innovations have tremendous growth potential. If incumbent companies can learn how to harness the forces of disruption, they too can improve their ability to create new-growth businesses.

Its actually really important that you succeed at what youre succeeding at, but that isnt going to be the measure of your life.

When a technology, regardless of how different and difficult it is, sustains the trajectory of performance improvement, my research asserts that the leaders in the prior generation of technology are likely to end up on top of their industry at the end of the transition.