The most enduring source of competitive advantage is for emotionally charged employees to capture the imagination of emotionally-drained customers. The opportunity to shake things up is as much about how you behave as what you offer.

5 New Rules for Starting Something New

1. It’s not good enough to be “pretty good” at everything. Blank-sheet-of-paper innovators figure out how to become the “most” of something
2. Just because you’re “most of something” doesn’t mean you can’t do lots of things. Being unique is not about being narrow
3. Long-term success is about more than thinking harder than the competition; it’s also about caring more than the competition
4. In a world of endless choice, companies must engage customers emotionally, not just satisfy them rationally. Remember, if your customers can live without you, eventually they will
5. Starting something new doesn’t alway mean starting a new company. You don’t need to be a blank-sheet-of-paper entrepreneur to embrace a blank-sheet-of-paper mindset

– from “Practically Radical,” William Taylor