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).

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

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.

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

The biggest problem is typically overly ambitious expectations combined with undercapitalization.

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.

Smart mobile phones connect you with 1 billion users worldwide, basically for free - you don't pay for the phone, you don't pay for the Internet, you don't pay for the wireless connectivity. Social networks let you add a new customer or a new agent, again for free.