Problem-insight precedes solution insight. Someone has to recognise a problem before they start to solve the problem…

With a clever strategy, each action is self-reinforcing. Each action creates more options that are mutually beneficial. Each victory is not just for today but for tomorrow.

Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for...

Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker...

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.

The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the...

Innovation is about practical creativity – it’s about making new ideas useful…

Culture is the sum of the values, beliefs and assumptions of human groups.

Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.

Before innovation – or practical creativity – there is insight. You must see the world differently.

Innovation can start with wanting what does not yet exist – and finding a solution – or seeing what does not yet exist – and finding an opportunity.

Strategy is not really a solo sport – even if you’re the CEO.

As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas.

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage…

A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.

If traditional doesn’t work, then traditions won’t do.

Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of...

Strategy is about out-thinking your competition. Mark Zuckerberg, while at Harvard, built a website called Facemash ‘for fun’. Even today, Facebook believe that ‘done is better than perfect’.

If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas.

The psychology of individual creativity is about at least three different things. First, creativity is about thinking differently. Second, creativity is about feeling differently. Third, creativity is about focusing, or committing, differently.

The real heart of strategy is the strategist.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.

There are no perfect leaders.

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.

Following the rules of your industry will only get you so far.

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.