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.

I believe that crisis really tends to help develop the characer of an organisation.

As a brand marketer, I'm a big believer in 'branding the customer experience,' not just selling the service.

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.

I was recruited by Pepsi and put out in Pittsburgh, and I worked in the bottling lines, and then I was sent on to Phoenix, Arizona, where I also drove trucks and I put up signs, Pepsi signage, and I was then sent on to Las Vegas for a month of training, and then I finally ended up in Milwaukee. So I got a really hands - on introduction to the soft-drink industry. I was so appreciative of the fact that I was able to not only learn a business through what I learned at business school, but I was able to learn it with hands-on learning. I'm a huge believer in hands-on learning.

Steve [Jobs] and I spent months getting to know each other before I joined Apple. He had no exposure to marketing other than what he picked up on his own. This is sort of typical of Steve. When he knows something is going to be important, he tries to absorb as much as he possibly can.

Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it's designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out.