All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

Confidence means non-paralysis, a willingness to act, and act decisively, to start new things and cut failing ventures off.

Who, precisely, are your Dreamers? Are their Dreams in Technicolor? Do you allow their most Outrageous Dreams to be seen in public?

I don't want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, 'He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn't let him.

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.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services - from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants - are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.

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.