Sustaining innovations are the key to consistent performance, whereas disruptive innovations are the key to dramatic changes in power.

Marketing has long known how to exploit fads and how to develop trends.

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.

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.

Sustaining innovations are the key to consistent performance, whereas disruptive innovations are the key to dramatic changes in power.

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.