First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn't the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.

Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.

...the question, Why try for greatness? would seem almost tautological. If you're doing something you care that much about, and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It's just a given.

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more time being interested?" Collin's advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.

Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.