Music Midtown Quotes

of my jacket pocket. By this point, with my full workday and tonight’s party of all parties to plan, I was more surprised when it wasn’t going off. A sound, deafening even by midtown Manhattan standards, hammered into my ears as I made the corner. Was it a jackhammer? A construction pile driver? Of course not, I thought, as I spotted a black kid squatting on the sidewalk, playing drums on an empty Spackle bucket. Luckily, I also spotted my lunch appointment, Aidan Beck, at the edge of the crowded street performance. Without preamble, I hooked elbows with the fair, scruffily handsome young man and pulled him into the chic Hudson. At the top of the neon-lit escalator, a concierge who looked like one of the happy, shiny cast members of High School Musical smiled from behind the Carrara marble check-in desk. “Hi. I called twenty minutes ago,” I said. “I’m Mrs. Smith. This is Mr. Smith. We’d like a room with a large double bed. The floor or view doesn’t matter. I’m paying cash. I’m really in a rush.” The clerk took in my sweating face and the contrast between my sexy office attire and my much younger companion’s faded jeans and suede jacket with seeming approval. “Let’s get you to your room, then,” the über-happy concierge said without missing a beat.

While he was in school, we needed to pay our bills. I had to get a job. I'd majored in music (piano). I had no business credentials, connections, or confidence, so I started as a secretary to a retail sales broker at Smith Barney in midtown Manhattan. It was the era of Liar's Poker, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Working Girl. Working on Wall Street was exciting. I started taking business courses at night and I had a boss who believed in me, which allowed me to bridge from secretary to investment banker. This rarely happens. Later I became an equity research analyst and subsequently cofounded the investment firm Rose Park Advisors with Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. When I walked onto Wall Street through the secretarial side door, and then walked off Wall Street to become an entrepreneur, I was a disruptor. "Disruptive innovation" is a term coined by Christensen to describe an innovation at the low end of the market that eventually upends an industry. In my case, I had started at the bottom and climbed to the top—now I wanted to upend my own career. No wonder my friend thought I'd lost my sanity. According to Christensen's theory, disruptors secure their initial foothold at the low end of the market, offering inferior, low-margin products. At first, the disrupter's position is weak. For example, when Toyota entered the U.S. market in the 1950s, it introduced the Corona, a small, cheap, no-frills car that appealed to first-time car buyers on a tight budget.