Once you have power, you are inevitably surrounded by people who have their own agendas and will tell you whatever advances them.

Companies don't have ideas. Only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds of loyalty and trust they develop around each other.

If you have never failed at anything, then you haven't been trying hard enough, aren't very imaginative, or have had such extraordinarily good luck that you have come to believe you are invincible.

If the company depends entirely on you - your creativity, ingenuity, inspiration, salesmanship or charisma - nobody will want to buy it. The risk and the dependency are too great.

Business is not a science; it is not susceptible to experiments that can be controlled and replicated. Everything in business is too unpredictable for that - every business, employee, product, market is different and keeps changing.

Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.

I regularly take my entrepreneurship students out walking because I want to get them in the habit of noticing and thinking about what they notice. They have to leave their phones behind to learn the basic lesson: Be where you are.