You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.

I don't look at business as a zero-sum game. I don't. I've never seen it play out that way in our industry, and I think you innovate and you add value, deliver value back to customers, and you get value back from the world.

The world is being re-shaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.

When I look out from my own business career, I tried to learn from some of the best people, regardless of the industry.

I'm amazed by the potential of more companies employing integrated philanthropic initiatives at earlier stages in their life cycle. What if this were done on an even more massive scale? Consider what would happen if a top-tier venture-capital firm required the companies in which it invested to place 1% of their equity into a foundation serving the communities in which they do business.

Although I loved working on technology - I've always been a computer geek at heart - my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.

You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.