I believe that only a subset of us is meant to lead. The rest want to follow.

On a personal side, I found Bo Burlingham's Small Giants to be a great window into how business can be an extension of social change and the critical role the entrepreneur plays in creating progress in society.

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.

By the time I entered this prestigious high school, my interest in formal education had already been exhausted.

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.

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.