p.127 This paper... argues that a monitoring of the periphery can help diffuse small problems before they become crises.

p.127 the periphery: it is just beyond reach, it is constantly changing, and the things we don't see in this periphery... can cause serious trouble and derail our progress.

p.127 The periphery is easy to ignore. It is the part of the world that does not occupy the centre of attention.

p.128 Foster and Kaplan write that in the 'vortex of creative destruction... attacking companies occupy the periphery, while defenders occupy the core of the vortex, focusing on the evolutionary improvement of the existing business.'

p.129 In addition to failing to see competitive threats from the periphery, companies also can make serious mistakes by failing to fully appreciate actions or reactions at the periphery.

p.130 It is natural to ignore the periphery... Proactive attention to the periphery can help diffuse small problems before they become major crises... Vigilant peripheral vision has helped... organisations anticipate and prepare for potential shifts in their environments... the periphery... is where the first signs of shifts in the environment might be noticed.

p.130-131 Where is the periphery? One answer is that the periphery is wherever your attention is not... With limited resources, any company must ask where to focus its attention... Narrowing the focus, while efficient, inevitably creates large blindspots.

p.132 there will always be parts of the world that fall outside the organisation's focal vision... The key question to ask is whether your organisation is too narrowly or broadly focused... studying the periphery... may require a greater capacity to discuss, debate and learn.

p.133 'You have to collect, process, translate, move it down the funnel, transform it from noise into signal, before you know it is useful.'

p.134 The basic stages of this information processing paradigm revolve around perception, judgment, action and feedback.

p.134 By definition, peripheral vision requires a broad definition of scope... it entails paying attention to a lot of things the organisation might typically ignore... In general, the more uncertain the environment, the more likely there are to be threats from the periphery and the broader the scope that is needed.

p.136 Once the scope is set, learning begins with scanning. This scanning can be focused on exploitation or exploration.

p.138 The physicist Michael Faraday accidentally discovered induction current in 1831 when he noticed that his ampmeter moved after he changed a magnetic field around the wire. Many other physicists might have seen this brief change in the dial but would not have realised its significance.

p.138 one of the biggest impediments to the creative interpretation of the periphery is the urge to impose too much order on an inherently ambiguous picture.

p.139 This ability to suspend focus or judgment and switch between different views is key to interpreting the periphery. Paradoxically, organisations often try to make too much sense of an inherently noisy environment. They would be better off making less sense and developing multiple views... The ambiguity of the periphery requires a cautious stance when confronted with relevant but ambiguous external developments.