Bethany McLean Quotes

From a product development perspective, choosing whether a technology is disruptive at a potential moment is key.

Innovation is critical to the heartbeat of any successful corporation in the industrialized world.

All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow.

No CEO ever says, 'Damnit, we need to increase research!' I want to encourage them to do that.

In business, success often depends upon the relative age of your ideas.

Innovation must lead infrastructure for a simple but compelling reason: Innovation produces new types of products and markets, and it is virtually impossible to know how to run those markets efficiently before they are created.

Since the beginning, HTC has focused on developing strong research and development capabilities and keeping a close eye on consumer, market and technology trends.

If companies don't think systemically enough - if they try to capture too much of the value - eventually, innovation moves somewhere else.

When you're a large company with significant market share, it's tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, but we view them as an opportunity.

You need to run the company on an even keel, and you need to be thinking about the company long-term and how to drive your next innovation.

Innovation means taking risks, and that is where the private sector can play a role.

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

In any business, you have to evolve.

The pace of innovation may slow down or speed up depending on the appetite in the public markets, but the constant progress of technology doesn't really ever stop. There's always opportunities for new ideas and creative people to go build great things. I'm always interested in learning about those kinds of opportunities.

First of all, at any company, the investment in research and development in the products is the lifeblood, so that is a critical element of anyone's future going forward.

Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.

You know, IBM was almost knocked out of the box by other types of computer software and manufacturing.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?

There's something about me that wants to grow a big company. I don't deny that. I enjoy the game, and the only way to really enjoy it is to win. I like to win. It's more fun.

No one should expect building a new high-growth, software-powered company in an established industry to be easy. It's brutally difficult.

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn't.

Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.