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.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount.

The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.

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.

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.

Win small, win early, win often.

As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating.