From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top.
In an increasingly non-linear economy, incremental change is not enough-you have to build a capacity for strategy innovation, one that increases your ability to recognize new opportunities.
You can’t use an old map to see a new land.
The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if ‘do unto others’ really was a rule.
Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who’s forging a bullet with your company’s name on it. You’ve got one option now – to shoot first. You’ve got to out innovate the innovators.
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.
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but its pretty much the whole game today.
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.