Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it.

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.

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

Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance.

All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past - by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths.

To be embraced, a change effort must be socially constructed in a process that gives everyone the right to set priorities, diagnose barriers, and generate options.

The problem is not one of prediction. It is one of imagination.