Quote

Our goal is to desperately make the best products we can. We're not naive. We trust that if we're successful and we make good products, that people will like them. And we trust that if people like them, they'll buy them. And we figured out the operation and we're effective. We know what we're doing, so we'll make money, but it's a consequence.

When you do everything to make the very best product, it also means you're very focused on just a few products.

A sustaining innovation makes better products that you can sell for better profits to your best customers.

We have to find a happy medium in our use of technology. We want things to be efficient, but we have to compartmentalise, too, so that if there is one flaw discovered, the whole thing doesn't topple.

As we get better at things, we need less people to produce the things we really need, but what do we do with the rest of the people? They have to be doing something, too, to buy from those few which are doing the really basic stuff, and so that's why we need to be continually producing new stuff.

If we're building high quality companies, if the customers like the products, if the technology innovation is real, then the substance is going to win out in the end.

There are very important and practical issues raised by following this alternative route which says, let's look to material conditions, to the systems of production, to the needs that human beings have, and to competing alternative solutions to the satisfaction of those needs.

The by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product.

When a product is made, everyone hopes for the best. Whether it could have been better or not is more of an afterthought.

Second, we have to make the most of the strengths we have, the amenities that many of our competitors cannot replicate. But again, those advantages won't mean much if we don't do a great job with the basics of our business.