Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".

You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging

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

Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits.

One should not focus on the differences between people but look for commonality and similarity.

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

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.