If you ask why start-ups outperform established enterprises when it comes to catching the next wave, the answer is that they are not conflicted. Everyone is rowing in the same direction. That is never the case in a company that has a portfolio of businesses at different stages in their maturity. So the key to winning there has to be to "zone out" the conflicts - sort of like sending quarrelling children each to their own room.

Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a freeway.

As a buying group, visionaries are easy to sell but very hard to please. This is because they are buying a dream - which, to some degree, will alwasy be a dream.

Smart mobile phones connect you with 1 billion users worldwide, basically for free - you don't pay for the phone, you don't pay for the Internet, you don't pay for the wireless connectivity. Social networks let you add a new customer or a new agent, again for free.

Sustaining innovation is the lifeblood of any enterprise. It is the time when we capitalize upon, and recover from, all the disruptive change prior. Most of the operating profits in the world come from sustaining innovation. Much of the market capitalization gains, on the other hand, come from disruptive innovations.

Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway.

To fix the business, to bring it back to health, you must assimilate enough of the disruptive innovation to modernize the operating model without jettisoning your business model. This typically requires new leaders and definitely requires new (if temporary) rules. The CEO is the only person who can dictate the correct terms in a timely manner and maintain the enterprise's commitment to those terms for the duration of the rehabilitation effort.