Motivation is the catalyzing ingredient for every successful innovation. The same is true for learning.
Meanwhile, expecting expensive institutions to become more cost efficient, and asking expensive professionals to take pay cuts while squeezing in more and more patients, are not viable avenues for mak...
Low-end disruption has occurred several times in retailing.16 For example, full-service department stores had a business model that enabled them to turn inventories three times per year. They needed t...
It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation about happiness without understanding what makes each of us tick. When we find ourselves stuck in unhappy careers—and even unhappy lives—it is often t...
In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their...
In the instances studied in this book, established firms confronted with disruptive technology typically viewed their primary development challenge as a technological one: to improve the disruptive te...
In sustaining circumstances—when the race entails making better products that can be sold for more money to attractive customers—we found that incumbents almost always prevail. In disruptive circumsta...
In my experience, high-achievers focus a great deal on becoming the person they want to be at work—and far too little on the person they want to be at home. Investing our time and energy in raising wo...
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing. After decades of watching great companies fail over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a better...
Identifying disruptive footholds means connecting with specific jobs that people—your future customers—are trying to get done in their lives.
I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need...
How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fas...
Here’s one example to illustrate the point. When a smoker takes a cigarette break, on one level he’s simply seeking the nicotine his body craves. That’s the functional dimension. But that’s not all th...
For innovators, understanding the job is to understand what consumers care most about in that moment of trying to make progress.
First, disruptive products are simpler and cheaper; they generally promise lower margins, not greater profits. Second, disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insigni...
Every hour I spent doing that while at Oxford, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. At the time, I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I s...
But if anyone believes that he is working harder but is being paid less than another person, it would be like transplanting cancer into this company.
Because if the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.
As long as Toyota is continually identifying anomalies in the manufacturing process, every single defect is seen as an opportunity to make the process better. There are, in effect, a set of rules that...
As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn’t do for me.