Innovation in a Reinvented World: 10 Essential Elements to Succeed in the New World of Business

What Happened?

We lost our way. As the country matured, we dropped our guard. We became blind to the fact that other countries noticed our complacency and saw a competitive entry point. Resting on our past laurels and successes weakened our culture of competitiveness.

Too many U.S. companies offered innovation lip service without truly innovating, while breaking the social contracts of employer-employee trust. Too many workers failed to show up like they meant it, ready to fully engage and deliver their best efforts.

Companies sent jobs overseas without accountability for the unemployed left in their pink slip wake, as they competed against heavily subsidized competitors who had created this nonlevel playing field. Our core values began to erode.

The middle class was duped into believing the playing field was level for them. It wasn't. High-interest credit cards provided users with a false sense of security. When we maxed out our credit cards trying to keep up with the American dream, our homes replaced plastic with paper via second and third mortgages.

As an optimistic and trusting bunch, we really wanted to believe that those who ran our institutions were minding the store. We were too busy running up big credit card balances that kept our economy humming. Our homes were like Monopoly money, and industries that we were told were too big to fail fell like dominoes.

We bought into this image of ourselves as a great world leader, not bothering to validate whether the leadership ...