Companies get into grooves and they keep sharpening what they are doing, when in fact what they really need to do sometimes is to stop and do something completely differently.

Avoiding along some dimensions is easy. Create organization space and bring in some new talent so the innate cultural resistance is less material. Unfortunately, it's rarely that easy.

The reality is customers lie - not because they want to want to deceive you, but because they don't do a good job of predicting what they will do in the future.

Some people who were central to former success aren't the right people for your future success.

Data about an innovative idea is rarely crystal clear.

Of course if you are launching a new business you can thinking about revenues, profits, and so on, but metrics such as customer satisfaction or employee retention might be meaningful if you are focusing more internally.

A spreadsheet for an innovative idea reports the mathematical relationship between made up numbers. You can't cash a spreadsheet.