When we are looking at ideas, we really are thinking of three things. Are you doing something that seems consistent with the patterns of success? Are there reasons to believe you have or can access the right people to make it happen? Can we play a unique role in enabling success? We all have our rules of thumb, I suppose.

The reality is sometimes markets don't exist for very good reasons. It might be that there isn't a deep customer need. Or the economic model is just hard to pull off. Or maybe there is a regulatory barrier.

Leaders today face challenges for which they are utterly unprepared.

If you are trying to improve the performance of existing operations in known markets, it is an analytical problem where it's just a question of aligning your execution engine in the right way. If it is about creating something new and different, you can't derive the right answer analytically.

I'm not very good at sitting still.

The most important thing here is to largely ignore what customers say, and instead watch what they do or track where they spend money.

People who live in more than two countries are more successful innovators.