The common wisdom is that ... managers have to learn to motivate people. Nonsense. Employees bring their own motivation.

A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.

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.

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

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.

The good news - and it is largely good news - is that everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark

The dominant culture in most big companies demands punishment for a mistake, no matter how useful, small, invisible.