Timing in life is everything.
Stay the course and keep building an integrated Apple ecosystem of iPhone + iPod + iMac + iTunes + App Store + Apple TV. No one has yet demonstrated they understand how to create an 'experience-based ecosystem' as well as Apple.
We see healthcare shifting from a procedure reimbursement, where in this country doctors are reimbursed for how many procedures they conduct, to a world where people will be reimbursed for the outcomes - did the patient actually get better, and what was the total cost of the cycle of care.
The launch of iPhone is very possibly bigger than the launch of the first Apple II or the first Mac. Steve Jobs's genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts.
I didn't appreciate, coming out of corporate America... what it meant to a founder, the creator of the Macintosh, to be asked to step down from the very division that he created to lead the very product that he believed was going to change the world.
The Mac defined 'personal technology', and the iPhone defines 'intimate technology' as a convergence of communications, content and location.
I never claimed to be a computer engineer, but I did train as an industrial designer, and I am a consumer marketer, and I am very comfortable dealing with complex businesses and complexity in general and simplifying it - basically a systems designer.
Apple and Samsung are selling in such high volumes, and they're vertically integrated more and more, that it's very, very hard for anyone to compete against Apple and Samsung in the high-volume part of the smartphone or tablet market.
Our primary goal in the consumer health service companies I back is helping them create an uncompromisingly great consumer experience.
Apple makes really good products, and Samsung makes really good products. It's really a two-horse race. Where I think Apple is exposed: the price points of Apple's products are just so high by comparison with Samsung's.
I think that Apple has revolutionized every other consumer industry; why not television? The complexity of the experience of using the television gets more and more complicated. So it seems exactly the sort of problem that if anyone is going to change the experience of what the first principles are, it is going to be Apple.
Health care missed the PC and Internet revolutions, but it can't afford to miss the cloud and mobile revolution.
Health innovation, enabled by digital technologies to build big consumer service brands, is an incredibly interesting, complex problem to work on.
The healthcare industry has never had a priority on user experience because there has been little competition. Prices have never been transparent.
I think that the health care industry is so complex that it doesn't necessarily start with a single killer app. You go back to the early days of the personal computer - when I joined the industry, we really didn't know what the killer app was going to be.
As a brand marketer, I'm a big believer in 'branding the customer experience,' not just selling the service.