GARY HAMEL

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.

Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines.

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 it's pretty much the whole game today.

Most companies don't have the luxury of focusing exclusively on innovation. They have to innovate while stamping out zillions of widgets or processing billions of transactions.

An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth.

As human beings, we are the genetic elite, the sentient, contemplating and innovating sum of countless genetic accidents and transcription errors.

A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It's close to being functionally flawless - like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google's home page.

To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.

An employee who's one of hundreds, rather than one of a few, is unlikely to feel personally responsible for helping the organization adapt and change.

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform.

You have to train people how to be business innovators. If you don't train them, the quality of the ideas that you get in an innovation marketplace is not likely to be high.

In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart.

In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge.

Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.

I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms.

An enterprise that is constantly exploring new horizons is likely to have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent.

Businesses fail when they over-invest in what is at the expense of what could be.

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.

As the great grandchildren of the industrial revolution, we have learned, at last, that the heedless pursuit of more is unsustainable and, ultimately, unfulfilling. Our planet, our security, our sense of equanimity and our very souls demand something better, something different.

In a democracy, you don't need anyone's permission to form a new political party, publish a politically charged article, or organize a 'tea party.' And in open markets, individuals are free to buy and invest as they see fit.

In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.

Fact is, inventing an innovative business model is often mostly a matter of serendipity.

Over time, a successful company will acquire much in the way of resources and momentum, and these things often insulate it from reality once it has stopped being successful.

Building human-centered organizations doesn't imply a return to the paternalistic, corporate welfare practices of the 19th century. Most of us don't want to be nannied.