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During The Ten Years I Lived In The U.k., I Frequently Attended An Anglican Church Just Outside Of London. I Enjoyed The Energetic Singing And The Thoughtful Homilies. And Yet, I Found It Easy To Be A Pew Warmer, A Consumer, A Back Row Critic.

-Gary Hamel

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During The Ten Years

Gary Hamel

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During The Ten Years I Lived In The U.k., I Frequently Attended An Anglican Church Just Outside Of London. I Enjoyed The Energetic Singing And The Thoughtful Homilies. And Yet, I Found It Easy To Be A Pew Warmer, A Consumer, A Back Row Critic.

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The Opportunities For Future Growth Are Everywhere. Seeing The Future Has Nothing To Do With Speculating About What Might Happen. Rather, You Must Understand The Revolutionary Potential Of What Is Already Happening.

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All Too Often, Legacy Management Practices Reflexively Perpetuate The Past - By Over-weighting The Views Of Long-tenured Executives, By Valuing Conformance More Highly Than Creativity And By Turning Tired Industry Nostrums Into Sacred Truths.

Truth Be Told, There Are Lots Of Companies That Provide Exemplary Phone Support. Directv, Virgin America And Apple Are A Few That Regularly Exceed My Expectations.

As Human Beings, We Are The Genetic Elite, The Sentient, Contemplating And Innovating Sum Of Countless Genetic Accidents And Transcription Errors.

Competition For The Future Is Competition To Create And Dominate Emerging Opportunities-to Stake Out New Competitive Space. Creating The Future Is More Challenging Than Playing Catch Up, In That You Have To Create Your Own Roadmap.

Out There In Some Garage Is An Entrepreneur Who's Forging A Bullet With Your Company's Name On It. You've Got One Option Now - To Shoot First. You've Got To Out Innovate The Innovators.

The Single Biggest Reason Companies Fail Is They Overinvest In What Is, As Opposed To What Might Be.

Somewhere Out There Is A Bullet With Your Company's Name On It. Somewhere Out There Is A Competitor, Unborn And Unknown, That Will Render Your Strategy Obsolete. You Can't Dodge The Bullet – You're Going To Have To Shoot First. You're Going To Have To Out-innovate The Innovators.

Are We Changing As Fast As The World Around Us?

I Don't Know Whether The Universe Contains Any Evidence Of Intelligent Design, But I Can Assure You That Thousands Of Everyday Products Do Not.

I'm A Capitalist By Conviction And Profession. I Believe The Best Economic System Is One That Rewards Entrepreneurship And Risk-taking, Maximizes Customer Choice, Uses Markets To Allocate Scarce Resources And Minimizes The Regulatory Burden On Business.

There Is No Way To Create Wealth Without Ideas. Most New Ideas Are Created By Newcomers. So Anyone Who Thinks The World Is Safe For Incumbents Is Dead Wrong.

You Can't Use An Old Map To See A New Land.

**new Business Concepts Are Always, Always The Product Of Lucky Foresight.** That's Right - The Essential Insight Doesn't Come Out Of Any Dirigiste Planning Process; It Comes Form Some Cocktail Of Happenstance, Desire, Curiosity, Ambition And Need. But At The End Of The Day, There Has To Be A Degree Of Foresight -- A Sense Of Where New Riches Lie. So Radical Innovation Is Always One Part Fortuity And One Part Clearheaded Vision. [first-line Bold By Author] [2002] P.23

In A Well-functioning Democracy, Citizens Have The Option Of Voting Their Political Masters Out Of Office. Not So In Most Companies.

In The Age Of Revolution It Is Not Knowledge That Produces New Wealth, But Insight - Insight Into Opportunities For Discontinuous Innovation. Discovery Is The Journey; Insight Is The Destination. You Must Become Your Own Seer.

We Live In A Moment That Is Pregnant With Possibility.

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When A Politician Bends The Truth Or A Ceo Breaks A Promise, Trust Takes A Beating.

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Business Leaders Must Find Ways To Infuse Mundane Business Activities With Deeper, Soul-stirring Ideals, Such As Honor, Truth, Love, Justice, And Beauty.

It Doesn't Matter Much Where Your Company Sits In Its Industry Ecosystem, Nor How Vertically Or Horizontally Integrated It Is - What Matters Is Its Relative 'share Of Customer Value' In The Final Product Or Solution, And Its Cost Of Producing That Value.

Innovation Is The Only Insurance Against Irrelevance.

The Only Thing That Can Be Safely Predicted Is That Sometime Soon Your Organization Will Be Challenged To Change In Ways For Which It Has No Precedent.

Organizational Structures Of Today Demand Too Much From A Few, And Not Much At All From Everyone Else.

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There's A Simple, But Oft-neglected Lesson Here: To Sustain Success, You Have To Be Willing To Abandon Things That Are No Longer Successful.

Today, No Leader Can Afford To Be Indifferent To The Challenge Of Engaging Employees In The Work Of Creating The Future. Engagement May Have Been Optional In The Past, But Its Pretty Much The Whole Game Today.

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People Are All There Is To An Organization

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Over The Centuries, Religion Has Become Institutionalized, And In The Process Encrusted With Elaborate Hierarchies, Top-heavy Bureaucracies, Highly Specialized Roles And Reflexive Routines.

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Top-down Authority Structures Turn Employees Into Bootlickers, Breed Pointless Struggles For Political Advantage, And Discourage Dissent.

Companies Do Not Do New Things Because They Understand It But Because They Feel It.

The Real Damper On Employee Engagement Is The Soggy, Cold Blanket Of Centralized Authority. In Most Companies, Power Cascades Downwards From The Ceo. Not Only Are Employees Disenfranchised From Most Policy Decisions, They Lack Even The Power To Rebel Against Egocentric And Tyrannical Supervisors.

Obviously, You Don't Have To Be Religious To Be Moral, And Beastly People Are Sometimes Religious.

Win Small, Win Early, Win Often.

We Owe Our Existence To Innovation. Our Species Exists Thanks To Four Billion Years Of Genetic Innovation.

A Titled Leader Relies Heavily On Positional Power To Get Things Done; A Natural Leader Is Able To Mobilize Others Without The Whip Of Formal Authority.

Fact Is, Inventing An Innovative Business Model Is Often Mostly A Matter Of Serendipity.

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