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.

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.

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.

Systems are corporate funded mechanisms for increasing efficiency; programs are user funded mechanisms for increasing effectiveness. Programs should generally be charged back to users, systems should never be. Allocating corporate overhead to the operating units is simply a mistake.

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.

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).

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.