Call it the Tiger Mom effect: In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option.

It's a simple fact: no individual can be good at everything. Everyone needs people around them who have complimentary sets of skills.

Don’t wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary “what if” scenarios dreamed up in a conference room.

Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

Once humans traded their hunter-gatherer existences for more settled communities, we began a quest to make our lives better and more comfortable, but we've also been sucking precious finite resources from our environment ever since.

I worked for Microsoft until 1996, till I had a different angle to view life. I wanted to be an entrepreneur and control my own destiny.