You can't think your way out of a box; you've got to act.

Business, life itself, is damned hard work if you wanna be good at it. Actually, that's precisely wrong. Business ceases to be work when you're chasing a dream that has engorged you. ("Work should be more fun than fun" - Noel Coward.) And if the passion isn't there. then biotech and plumbing will be equal drags.

There's nobody in the world that wouldn't change places with the Americans. The economy is phenomenally large, the entrepreneurial class is very alive and very well, the universities, despite budget problems, still turn out something like 90 percent of the refereed academic and technical articles in the world. There's a lot on everybody's agenda.

If timing ain't everything, it's damn close

Develop a respect and reverence for the principle of variation: the idea that the message ain't in the mean, the mode or the median - it's in the differences that occur throughout a population.

The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we're going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.

Skill at creating, exploiting, and exiting crucial alliances beats ownership of fixed assets