CEOs are no different than the guy in the mailroom. They all have to learn how to manage better the risk created by our increasingly risk-shifting world.

However, there's nothing more inspiring than a company that does solve problems and those problems are captured as part of a larger story.

I think small groups have more collective wisdom than an individual.

If the workers don't keep themselves current - with some assistance and guidance from their employers - then the workers who are in the legacy roles will have to be removed. That's what's so difficult.

When I started out, I wanted to have everything solved by the time I was 30. That didn't happen. Instead, I realized that the journey is the destination, that the work.

If the question is, how do we best produce business people who can succeed in the post-Great Recession era, then I think the MBA programs and their connection to large companies remains intact but it's not the path to a "Business Brilliant" life. It's a path to a middle-class existence marked by large stretches of security and comfort with occasional eruptions that you're probably ill-prepared to handle. Do I sound too cynical?

Because I work with entrepreneurs who own businesses, I have found Doug Tatum's No Man's Land to be a really helpful body of working knowledge. It's very applicable to most businesses that have the usual problems of growing businesses - managing people, capital, markets, etc.