There's a general belief that failure is the friend of the innovator, but I've come to view it a different way.

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.

Successful strategies adhere to a basic pattern.

Most companies are built to execute today's business model, not discover tomorrow's.

Most startup companies have two people, and they figure out creative ways to swarm problems. They move faster and have more impact.

I think people make innovation much more complicated than it needs to be.

Aside from the equivalent of blowing up the lab or letting a pathogen escape, the only failure is spending too long or too much money to learn.