To survive and prosper in the long term, people in companies need to create and innovate. And they need to do so as regularly and reliably as they breathe.
Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter draws an analogy between doing business now and playing croquet beside Alice in Wonderland, with the mallets, balls, wickets, and stakes all alive and all whimsically free to decide when and how they want to move. And Dartmouth business professor Richard D'Aveni says that relying too long on a competitive advantage is like "shoveling sand against the tide."