Marketing strategy is a series of integrated actions leading to a sustainable competitive advantage.

I have found that I always learn more from my mistakes than from my successes. If you aren't making some mistakes, you aren't taking enough chances.

There are just moments when all the stars are aligned for breakthrough products.

I feel most badly, though, [because] after 10 years, I was at the company, I wanted to go back to New York where I was from. Why I didn’t go to Steve Jobs and say, ‘Steve, let’s figure out how you can come back and lead your company.’ I didn’t do that, it was a terrible mistake on my part. I can’t figure out why I didn’t have the wisdom to do that. But I didn’t. And as life has it, shortly after that, I was fired.

People who take risks are the people you'll lose against.

I wanted to be an industrial designer, so I went to business school for that, and I then went on to marketing at Interpublic Group of Companies, which was one of the first organizations to actually think about brand marketing. I worked on Coca Cola's account, and then I was recruited by Pepsi, and I ended up being Pepsi's first MBA. I was called the High Wire Act because I was in my 20s and I was given jobs of increasing responsibility that I was totally unqualified for.

Microsoft's philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve [Jobs] would never do that. He doesn't get anything out there until it is perfected.