These successful practitioners have in common their apparent understanding—whether explicit or intuitive—of both their customers’ trajectories of need and their own technologists’ trajectories of supply. Understanding these trajectories is the key to their success thus far. But the list of firms that have consistently done this is disturbingly

Despite beliefs spawned by popular change-management and reengineering programs, processes are not nearly as flexible or “trainable” as are resources—and values are even less so.

This exacerbates their problem of downward immobility.

One theme common to all of these failures, however, is that the decisions that led to failure were made when the leaders in question were widely regarded as among the best companies in the world.

Small markets cannot satisfy the near-term growth requirements of big organizations.

Firms that sought growth by entering small, emerging markets logged twenty times the revenues of the firms pursuing growth in larger markets.

Each of these factors argues for a policy of implanting projects to commercialize disruptive innovations in small organizations that will view the projects as being on their critical path to growth and success, rather than as being distractions from the main business of the company.

Clearly, the lower-right quadrant offered the most fertile ground for success.

It made no sense for them to target capital investment at thin-slab casting, positioned as it was in the least-profitable, most price-competitive and commodity-like end of their business.