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.

If you are a large company and you want to do something unique, you almost by definition have to tap onto the core business in some way. Otherwise you are going into a naked fight against startups, and that's just a tough place to be.

I have a fear right now that what I call the advertising-narcissism complex is sucking up way too much top talent.

When we are looking at ideas, we really are thinking of three things. Are you doing something that seems consistent with the patterns of success? Are there reasons to believe you have or can access the right people to make it happen? Can we play a unique role in enabling success? We all have our rules of thumb, I suppose.

Bring different groups together internally, send them out to visit other companies, or bring in interesting speeches. Show that you love learning by having people on staff whose job it is to explore without any near-term metrics. Publicly shut a project down and talk about what a great job a team did because they learned so much. And so on.

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

You have to chip away at it and shape it to let the winning idea emerge.