One of the factors that make great companies so great is that they have processes that allow them to solve difficult problems again and again. These processes have developed over time as teams have successfully wrestled with a certain type of challenge. Eventually, people begin to say, "This is just how we do something around here." The problem develops when that team then has to solve a very different set of challenges. The processes that are such strengths can be crushing liabilities.

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

Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.

I have been blessed to see visions of eternity; and events in my future that have been important for me to foresee, have been revealed to me.

Regulatory fiat cannot create a market at a technologically interdependent interface. And by the same token, regulation and so-called monopoly power rarely prevail at modular interfaces between stages of value-added technology.

If you want to make better theory, you've got to use the best that's available and look through the lens of another discipline to see if you can uncover more anomalies. By looking at the phenomena of failure from the perspective of sales, marketing, finance, general management, and the equity markets, I was able to see things that Rebecca [Henderson] hadn't.

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.