1. There are great insights in Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma. The focus of that book is on Disruptive Innovation, where a new upstart with some new tech/angle crushes your business. A lot of your notes/principles here are captured in that book concisely.
2. One thing that is useful for employees to understand is how their company creates and executes on a strategy. It's crazy to me how many guides there are on strategy when most individuals do 0 strategy setting. The result is that you think of a great strategy, get shot down for whatever reason, and just grumble about how the "execs don't get it". It's much more fruitful to understand how the big dawgs are setting their strategy and what models they're using, and then you can figure out how to operate and innovate in that context.
3. Your comments on insight and research reminded me of Charlie Munger's talks on Mental Models. The basic idea is that you learn from a bunch of disciplines and your brain starts to tie things together and you'll produce insights. Shane over at Farnam Street (https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/) has a great guide and intro.
Overall, I enjoyed reading your post and am impressed by the level of research. Great job.