Conclusion

Not every company will be as visionary or as lucky as EMC, or as bold as G.E. Many organizations will never have to think outside of incremental growth to survive. But, for companies that want to, or need to, rethink their current course, understanding the lessons of transformation can accelerate the speed of success.

We can all learn to see between the lines.

We can all ask fresh questions.

We can all tap into the combined genomic elements that make up our business’ DNA.

We can all discover cross-industry trends in plain view and devise novel approaches to growth.

This final note on transformation brings us to the smaller scale moments when we feel the urge to make a new mark. Whether we’re sitting at our desks thinking about how to penetrate a new market, or imagining how our napkin sketches could develop into a new business, we can follow in the footsteps of the individuals who broke out of conventional thinking and defined a new next, such as Danae Ringelmann, who quit her Wall Street job to create an entirely new system for funding independent, creative, cause, and entrepreneurial projects using crowd-sourcing—IndieGoGo.