The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

You might say, well, aren't people saying that about wind and solar today? Not really. Only in the super-narrow sense that the capital costs per output, when the wind is blowing, is slightly lower.

Whenever you have a few setbacks, the idea that half as many children are dying now as back in 1990 and so... it was over 12 million a year, now it's less than 6 million a year. We have a clear path to get that under 3 million a year and we know what to do. And this generation of young Africans is a very large group.

In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn't been the case for teaching.