Great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why.

I admire companies that have a purpose, passion, and performance. I am a fan of Unilever under its CEO Paul Polman, not only for the company's insights into women and men when they buy beauty products or skin products (the DOVE woman, the AXE man), but also as a company seeking to achieve both growth and practicing social responsibility.

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets.

Don’t buy market share. Figure out how to earn it.

Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value.

We need to put limits on how much an individual, group or business can spend on influencing an individual legislator or a whole set of legislators. Look at the vast sums that the NRA spends on getting all legislators to be soft on gun control. Legislators find it hard to refuse the NRA's largess when they need contributions to their political campaign wherever they can get them.

A person without an Apple watch is perfectly content with his present watch but when he sees his friends buying the watch, he will hanker for an Apple watch. The endless cycle of wanting, getting, and wanting again is part of the plot of Capitalism. It is the way Capitalism creates jobs. The only antidote is Buddhism that holds that people might be happier by renouncing desire rather than by striving to satisfy desire. But then how can the economy create enough jobs in a Buddhist society of "less is more."