Success is a lousy teacher. It makes you think you know what you're doing.

When we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security.

Being maniacal about something is very helpful.

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved. Eliminate politics, by giving everybody the same message. Keep a flat organization in which all issues are discussed openly. Empower teams to do their own things.

The US spends more on energy R&D than all other countries put together, and I personally consider it quite inadequate. In fact, I would have said we should more than double it, if I thought the absorptive capacity could scale up and if it was actually possible to get to that level.

The main thing that's missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.

The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor. I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities.