Passion. The life of an entrepreneur is occasionally exhilarating, and almost always exhausting. Only unbridled passion for the concept is likely to see you through the 17-hour days (month after month) and the painful mistakes that are part and parcel of the start-up process.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?

If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

Effective listening is a professional achievement-achieved only through hard work.

Digital content and electronic networks have changed the basic environmental conditionsin which documents are created, distributed, and used.