Greg Satell

Legendary strategists have long been compared to master chess players, who know the positions and capabilities of each piece on the board and are capable of thinking several moves ahead. Historically, that’s been a smart way to run businesses too.

Technology transforms marketing in waves. New platforms like search engines, social media and the mobile web create amazing opportunities, but leave marketers scrambling to develop the talent and tactics to capitalize on them.

Journalism has been thoroughly disrupted over the past decade. News organizations, especially newspapers, have come under heavy financial pressure, news bureaus have been closed or consolidated and journalists have had to rethink their profession.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that, “talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.” Lots of people are smart, but true genius has always had an element of mystery to it.

It’s not clear whether The New York Times Innovation Report was leaked on purpose or not, but it is an astounding document nonetheless. It is impressively honest, insightful and soul searching. Perhaps most importantly, it shows true digital literacy.

It was such a long, cold winter that it sometimes seemed as if we would be perpetually buried under a mountain of snow. As soon as we’d shovelled ourselves out, we’d get hit with another avalanche of it.

In a famous essay written in 1996, Bill Gates declared that content is king. He presciently foresaw that faster connection speeds would make content the “killer app” of the Internet, creating a “marketplace of experiences, ideas and products.”

Every great idea begins as a revelation. Yet when that flash of insight leads to action, it inevitably encounters the real world and that’s when hard lessons are learned. Adjustments have to be made and, with some luck, success can be achieved. But profitable models rarely come easy.

Leo Burnett’s fledgling firm got off to an inauspicious start when it opened in 1935. With one client account, a staff of eight and a bowl of apples in reception, cynics said that he would soon be selling those apples on the street.

In 2010 Pepsi pulled its Super Bowl ads and invested $20 million into its Refresh project, which employed crowdsourcing to support good causes. It was an astounding social media success, with more than 87 million votes cast.