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.

The only way an established enterprise can dramatically increase its stock price is by adding a net new high-growth earnings engine to its existing portfolio.

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.

A technology becomes truly disruptive when it drives the marginal cost of something that used to be scarce and expensive to approach zero. Thus, it used to be to deploy software at scale, you had to fund a data center, buy a set of servers, storage, and networking gear, build an in-house IT management capability, and buy an expensive stack of enabling software before you could even get started. Now you can get all that from Amazon or Microsoft on a pay-as-you-grow model.

Don't think you have to be the disrupter to win. A fast-following disruptee will do very well if you can bring your existing customers and ecosystem along with you.

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

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.