We decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others... Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself - and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too.

You can invest to create the new growth business while the core business is still growing, because new business units don't need to get big fast. But when the core business stops growing, investing to create new growth businesses becomes impossible.

Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.

There are other dimensions of biotechnology. If you think of biotechnology like the Internet, it's not a category - it's an infrastructure that can be deployed to sustain or disrupt. In health care, the most complex problems at the high end have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode by the best, most experienced physicians you can find.

What you need is a fundamental humility - the belief that you can learn from anyone.

Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well.

In most instances, biotechnology, though a radically different approach, is a sustaining technology: It's a dramatically improved way of targeting problems that we hadn't been able to solve with the conventional approach of mainstream pharmaceutical companies.