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When you first start rhyming
It started off slow and then you start climbing
But it wasn’t fast enough I guess
So you gave your other style a test
You was hardcore hip-hop
Now look at yourself, boy you done flip-flopped
Ice Cube ♦ True to the Game; Death Certificate (1991)
One of the hardest lessons in the corporate world is determining how to excel without selling out. I don’t mean, without cashing out – I mean without abandoning your core competency or mission statement. Companies expand into different industries and sectors while telling the investment community that in fact it is a related, vertical or horizontal integration move. Executives turn into social climbers and status seekers shunning the fundamental diligence and thoughtfulness that created their original success.
This is not to say that people should be change adverse. New styles and new methods are the heart of innovation, which is the corporate driver – soul of success. However, innovative methods do not justify abandoning a fundamental corporate mission. Keeping it real, does not have to be keeping it real dumb. Just don’t lose your focus. I suppose Steve Jobs would say, “stay crazy, stay wild.”
BPM TAKEAWAY#11:
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STAY ON MISSION (STATEMENT)
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FOCUS
C.O.D.E. Mizell [.com] 
Yes. In jazz the time and key signature form the limits of improvisation (generally, of course a virtuoso can push these limits as part of his creative enterprise). The basic thinking is: you can play whatever you want within certain limts bc that’s the formula for success. In hip-hop, I’d guess this translates to adhering to the rhytm pattern, meter. Here, perhaps a “master rhymer” (yeah, I know, un-cool phrase!) could push these limts and be successful. In terms of governance, its a “guided democracy” — freedom within limits.
Good video. Key questions seems to revolve around integration; vertical and horizontal. Keeping your ear bent to the ground as a way to capture diverse information, grow your knowledge base, expand network… and even talk to “union people” (gasp!).
Inside-outsider: stay in time and key signature and create whatever you can dreamup but can reach across and through all scales and even go above and below the musical staff if you are talented enough.
Well said. Great analogy of inside-outsider and scale-reach.