I've concluded that getting the categories right is an absolutely crucial step to building useful management theory, and unfortunately too few writers do this. You've got to engage in serious scholarship, and then figure out how to write it in a way that lots of people can understand.

An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better.

In general, the questions that are on our mind are the same questions that have been driving our work over the past decade. How do we bring order to this messy, unpredictable world of innovation? How can we dramatically improve the chances of creating a successful new-growth business? How can we do this again and again? More specifically, it has become very clear that the fundamental paradigms of market segmentation and branding are badly broken - and we're working on developing more useful theories for these dimensions of innovation.

Focus is scary—until you realize that it only means turning your back on markets you could never have anyway. Sharp focus on jobs that customers are trying to get done holds the promise of greatly improving the odds of success in new-product development.

Innovation simply isn't as unpredictable as many people think. There isn't a cookbook yet, but we're getting there.

Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.

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