From about ninth grade on, I knew I was a writer at heart. I had fantasies of being a great novelist, but I thought that seemed like an iffy way to try to make a living. So I tried journalism while in college, and really liked it. But even in journalism, I've always pursued ways to be somewhat literary, whether writing a column or writing books.

The explosion of the Web and digital media from 1995 to 2000 shook companies more profoundly in a shorter time than anything since the end of World War II.

If you spot a market where the only choices are at either one end or the other - high fidelity or high convenience - there's probably a big opportunity at the other end. That was the opening for Federal Express, for instance. When it started, there was only one mail service in America - the US Postal Service, which was high convenience. Fred Smith created a high-fidelity mail service.

Talented people can predict with great accuracy what's about to happen just a tiny bit ahead of their competitors. It might be two seconds ahead, or two hundredths of a second, or two days. Napoleon on an eighteenth century battlefield had something more like a two-day advantage. Wayne Gretzky in a hockey game was probably a second ahead of everyone else on the ice.

Chunking makes our brains more efficient. The more you can chunk something, the faster and easier you can process it. Wayne Gretzky had chunked hockey like no one before or since. Talented people have supremely chunked whatever they become talented at doing.

Chunking is the ability of the brain to learn from data you take in, without having to go back and access or think about all that data every time. As a kid learning how to ride a bike, for instance, you have to think about everything you're doing. You're brain is taking in all that data, and constantly putting it together, seeing patterns, and chunking them together at a higher level. So eventually, when you get on a bike, your brain doesn't have to think about how to ride a bike anymore. You've chunked bike riding.

High fidelity is a rich experience, and you'll put up with terrible convenience to get it - maybe it's high cost, waiting in line, jumping through hoops. High convenience is the opposite - it's a commodity, but it's cheap and easy and ubiquitous. A great exclusive boutique shop is high fidelity; Wal-Mart is high convenience. Both are hard to establish in their own way. The thing to remember about sustaining either is that you can't sit still. Some other entity will always find a way to challenge your fidelity position or your convenience position.