The problem with taking offense is that it's really hard to figure out what to do with it after you're done using it. Better to just leave it on the table and walk away. Umbrage untaken quietly disappears.

My problem with the search for the badge of real is that it trades your goals and your happiness for someone else's.

Here's the fascinating part, call it the golden shoulder: We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there's a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don't know who they are.

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map-these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?

The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission

Competition validates you. It creates a category. It permits the sale to be this or that, not yes or no.