Success Quote by Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins is smuggling a hard truth about “innovation” past the motivational posters: markets don’t pivot because executives finally see the light; they pivot because something breaks the old math. His phrasing is corporate-calm, but the worldview is almost combative. “Any big change” isn’t framed as a visionary choice - it’s framed as an outcome with conditions, and those conditions are “disruptive events” that move market share in ways incumbents didn’t price in.

The key word is “surprising.” Hawkins isn’t praising novelty for its own sake; he’s pointing to asymmetry. Technologies and platforms matter when they create effects that the dominant players can’t model early enough to defend against - new distribution, new costs, new user habits. That’s the subtextual jab at boardroom narratives: strategy is often just a retrofit of explanations after the surprise has already happened.

Coming from a businessman famous for riding and shaping platform shifts in games (from home computers to consoles to the early internet era), the line reads like a field report from someone who’s watched entire business models evaporate when the interface between product and customer changes. “Platforms” here is doing a lot of work: it implies gatekeepers, ecosystems, and the reality that power sits with whoever controls access, not whoever has the best individual product.

The intent is pragmatic, almost defensive: if you want real change, don’t just optimize the current game. Look for the event that changes who gets to play, and on what terms.