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Now let’s consider a larger example. As most people know, Steve Jobs’ first era at Apple resulted in disappointing sales, dissension, and ultimately, his dismissal by the company board. In a 2005 speech at Stanford University, Jobs later acknowledged that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him. "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything,” he said. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Jobs created a new company, NeXT Inc., and stated an intention to create the first interpersonal computer that could, among other things, integrate voice, image, graphics and video for the very first time to “revolutionize human communications and group work.” (Sound familiar?)

At NeXT he stripped away the layers of everything known and assumed about personal computing. Eventually, NeXT was purchased by Apple and Jobs victoriously returned. The intention, the study and the technology of NeXT found its way into something no one had ever thought of before: the iPod, iTunes and iPhone. A computer company forging into music appliances and cellular phones? Who’d have thought it? A business and technology breakthrough occured, and the world was changed.

Does the process always work? Time will tell, but since speaking with Gentempo, the more I consider it, the more examples of these consistent steps on the route to business ingenuity emerge. Gentempo has more examples of the breakthrough process at work in his articles, video blogs and presentations at