Once upon a time, a company imagined a future where music, video and books were all digital, instantly available through a hand-held gadget. It saw itself as a big seller of that digital content. No, we’re not talking about Apple, but about Barnes & Noble.

A potent quote, perhaps one learned early in your career, can convey your vision of life and work to your people. Enrique Salem, president and CEO of Symantec, reels off a few of his favorite leadership lessons, which happen to be quotes:

Forget the first-mover advantage. Arriv­ing late to the game is much more criti­cal to creating a successful product or business, says Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. Even the much-applauded Google co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, aren’t “breakthrough guys,” says Gladwell. “They’re tweakers.”

Knowing how to ask the right questions about the future can be more valuable than knowing the right answers about the past. Seven questions to help steer your business toward future growth:

It takes skill to imagine something, that is, literally see it in your mind, and then snap apart the components, rotate them, bend them, fold them and scan them from different perspectives. But that’s exactly the trick vision­aries like Jeff Hawkins excel at.