There’s a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.
We’ve reached the end of incrementalism. Only those companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy.
Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard.
The goal is not to speculate on what might happen, but to imagine what you can make happen.
Great accomplishments start with great aspirations.
The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon your organization will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent.
We like to believe we can break strategy down to Five Forces or Seven Ss. But you can’t. Strategy is extraordinarily emotional and demanding.
Your organization can start tweeting, but that wont change its DNA.
Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries.
Competition for the future is competition to create and dominate emerging opportunities-to stake out new competitive space. Creating the future is more challenging than playing catch up, in that you have to create your own roadmap.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you’re in trouble.
Strategy is, above all else, the search for above average returns.
Are we changing as fast as the world around us?
Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It’s the only insurance against irrelevance. It’s the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It’s the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.
Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor.
Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance.
Win small, win early, win often.
There is no way to create wealth without ideas. Most new ideas are created by newcomers. So anyone who thinks the world is safe for incumbents is dead wrong.
Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management’s unexamined beliefs.