Because if the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.

When the functionality of a product or service overshoots what customers can use, it changes the way companies have to compete. When the product isn't yet good enough, the way you compete is by making better products. In order to make better products, the architecture of the product has to be interdependent and proprietary in character.

...it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars but the individual people whose lives I've touched.

The mistake managers often make is defining their industry too narrowly. Digital's market share in the minicomputer market stayed very robust even as it fell off the cliff. Disruption seems to come out of nowhere, but if you know what to look for, you can spot important developments well before the market does.

Quite often startups were first out of the gate with a sustaining technology. But somehow the leaders got the technology and stayed atop their industries. Sometimes they acquired the startup; sometimes they just developed the technology as a follower and used their muscle and mass to win. But they always won.

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.