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

There are more than 9,000 billing codes for individual procedures and units of care. But there is not a single billing code for patient adherence or improvement, or for helping patients stay well.

Disruptive innovations create jobs, efficiency innovations destroy them.

It is a company's customers who effectively control what it can and cannot do.

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

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 whole enterprise of teaching managers is steeped in the ethic of data-driven analytical support. The problem is, the data is only available about the past. So the way weve taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when its too late.