The CEO should ask what he or she can do to raise the organization's curiosity quotient. One way to do this is to seek to learn more about current or prospective customers, not to figure out which segmentation model to slot them into, but to really understand them as human beings. Another is to live at the intersections where innovation magic occurs.

It's very easy to skip steps when documenting an idea.

There is what Steve Blank calls the stage where you are searching for a scalable business model. Then, there is the stage when you have found that model and need to scale it. In the former stage you have to have a "beginner's mind," be in learning mode, and expect to learn things you didn't anticipate.

Anytime you see a constrained market, where consumption is limited to those who have special skills or are wealthy, that signals an opportunity for innovation.

Almost every disruption starts at the perceived fringes of today's market.

If you are trying to improve the performance of existing operations in known markets, it is an analytical problem where it's just a question of aligning your execution engine in the right way. If it is about creating something new and different, you can't derive the right answer analytically.

The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.