I would have to say that my mother's entrepreneurial perspective, and that of her father's, are very evident in my own outlook.

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.

The disruption caused by globalization and technology (what Tom Friedman calls hyperconnectedness) will be around for the rest of our professional lives.

Apple made tools that helped people express their creativity and Steve Jobs knew that so he told that story well. But Facebook makes tools that help people connect and Mark Zuckerberg is hardly a story-teller. Nevertheless, he's become a leader because his products do such a good job of solving a problem.

As members of a minority, one that was often persecuted, that entrepreneurial perspective was burnished with a sense of "outsider" status - so not only were we committed to finding our own way of achieving success, we also grew up to believe that we'd have to fight to get whatever we wanted.

My fighting spirit has often seemed out of place.

I don't know if you hear this often but I would say The Razor's Edge (loosely based on a great W. Somerset Maugham novel). This was Bill Murray's first dramatic role so everyone thought he stunk in this deep character but I thought he and the movie were great. The movie takes place over decades so you see Murray's character go from goofy playboy all the way to wiser, older person. It's basically a movie version of the journey I described.