Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.

Swipe from the best, then adapt.

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

As far as I'm concerned, the first business leader who was able to establish a cult of personality around his tenure was Lee Iacocca.

Anybody who is an entrepreneur is a person who essentially has impaired judgment. The odds of success are zilch. This valley is loaded to the gills with a whole lot of totally insane people who honest to God believe that they can be the next Bill Gates or the next Scott McNealy. And that is genuinely stupid.

Formula for success: under promise and over deliver.

Think about the market, think about the design, and think about who is going to design for that market. Hit the mark.