The important thing is that over time, scientific progress transforms things that used to have to be dealt with in a problem-solving mode down to the pattern-recognition space; and from pattern recognition into the rules-based mode. This is the mechanism by which less-trained people are enabled to do more sophisticated things. This is always the way disruption happens. It enables a larger population of less-experienced people to do more sophisticated things.

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.

Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization to live by its wits rather than to rely on capricious subsidies or non-economic-based regulation to fuel my business.

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.

You can't find returns in investments you haven't made.

In a large successful company where your power base as CEO isn't all that secure, it's hard for a CEO to pursue a truly disruptive strategy.

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