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.

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.

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

The increasing presence of cloud computing and mobile smart phones is driving the digitization of everything across both consumer and enterprise domains. It is hard to imagine any area of human activity which is not being reengineered under this influence, either at present or in the very near future.

The danger is to cling to comfort and custom at a time when events demand breaking away from both. But it is also foolish to jump at every startling moment. Darwin selects primarily for prudent fast-following.

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.