If you ask the average guy on the street to name five companies that have truly transformed themselves over the few decades, Hewlett-Packard would be on everybody's list. You'd also put on this list GE and Johnson & Johnson.

There needs to be conviction and action behind rules.

Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something and it doesn't work and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet. Ultimately you become commercially successful.

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.

When product performance outstrips the ability of customers to use that performance in an industry, the competitive game changes. Under those circumstances you have to decouple components businesses from assembly businesses.

The innovations are far more important because the technology itself has now way to impact the world for good until it's embedded in the business model. Innovation it's the combination of the simplifying technology and the business model.

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.