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.

When you are incubating new ideas, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is very good advice. But when you are seeking to transform your enterprise's portfolio by scaling a fledgling business to material size - say ten percent of total enterprise revenue - then it is imperative that you make that the singular focus of everyone in the enterprise for the two to three year period it is likely to require to reach its tipping point. Expecting to do two such scaling efforts in parallel is simply folly, yet that is what the "eggs/basket" idea is often used to justify.

The first mistake is believing that transformational initiatives can be accomplished through normal channels and means. This cannot be done because there are too many conflicting interests that are competing to impede. The second is mistaking incubation for transformation and concluding that failure to achieve escape velocity is due to lack of innovation. It never is. It is always do to lack of leadership focus and, especially, fortitude.

We have embarked upon the world's largest and longest cocktail party, and every issue imaginable is up for grabs.

The most common misunderstanding of disruptive innovations is to overestimate their impact in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Another common misunderstanding is to associate disruptive with good.

Try to learn as fast as you can from the wizards and then steal what you can appropriate from them and use it to modernize your existing business model (without disrupting it).

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.