The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete.

Though progress starts with the imagination, only work can make things happen. And work itself works best when fueled, again by the imagination.

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.

An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action.

Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.

Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.