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" In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies. "

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" 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. "

" Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent. "

" 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. "

" I was frustrated for a long time with my colleagues in the business school world and with so many management authors who didn't really see themselves as innovators. They were glorified journalists. "

" Like a child star whose fame fades as the years advance, many once-innovative companies become less so as they mature. "

" If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites. "

" Most of us do more than subsist. From the vantage point of our ancestors, we live lives of almost unimaginable ease. Here again, we have innovation to thank. "

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

" 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. "

" It's not unusual for a would-be entrepreneur to get turned down half a dozen times before finding a willing investor - yet in most companies, it takes only one 'nyet' to kill a project stone dead. "

" In an ideal world, an individual's institutional power would be correlated perfectly with his or her value-add. In practice, this is seldom the case. "

" 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. "

" Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it. "

" 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. "

" If organized religion has become less relevant, it's not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs - it's because they've held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines. "

" You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to. "

" 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. "

" The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs. "

" Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard. "

" 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. "

" Large organizations don't worship shareholders or customers, they worship the past. If it were otherwise, it wouldn't take a crisis to set a company on a new path. "

" 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. "

" As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating. "

" Obviously, you don't have to be religious to be moral, and beastly people are sometimes religious. "

" When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating. "

" 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. "

" An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "