Thought leaders across the web

In the wake of his recent retirement, much has been written about Steve Job’s peerless leadership and how he transformed not just his company, Apple, but the way we interact and live with media and technology. However long Apple manages to stay on top, there is no doubt that Jobs, with his angular genius, relentless [...]

As we move into volatile times (again), business leaders more than ever need to maniacally focus on the few customers that matter most to them — and spend much less time on the rest. The customer may always be right, but not every customer is right for you. Some years ago, when our venture firm [...]

To attract and retain great people, several things need to coalesce. From the extrinsic reward of a salary to the more nuanced (and more important) intrinsic reward of people feeling that they have a meaningful role, it requires thought and a proactive approach to keep talent once you’ve got it. One of the most critical [...]

One of my greatest mentors was the late Jay Chiat of TBWA Chiat Day, an iconoclast in the field of advertising with a constant imagination for possibilities in business and life. Jay embodied the three traits of a “lucky attitude” that I described in my last post: humility, intellectual curiosity, and optimism. Of these three [...]

Some business builders just seem to have more luck than others. In fact, many of the entrepreneurs and business builders I know say luck is a driving factor in their success. But luck in business isn’t entirely, well, luck. There’s a popular saying that “you make your own luck.” This “make your own luck” principle [...]

My partner Mats Lederhausen, formerly worldwide head of strategy for McDonald’s, introduced me to “Strategy Trees.” The concept is, like most useful things, deceptively simple. It forces you to get at the heart of what you are trying to achieve. The “tree” analog comes from the linkage between the questions in a Strategy Tree. Start [...]

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with some of our portfolio company CEOs talking about how to differentiate their products and services. How should they think about their value or selling proposition? How can they best measure their success? For our portfolio businesses (especially those in digital media and information services) and [...]

For HBR’s April issue on failure, I penned a piece on the experience of going through a failed IPO. In one context or another, you’ve likely failed, too. You may have chosen to frame it some other way (“experience,” “lessons learned,” etc.), but it was failure. First, welcome to the club. We’ve all been there. [...]

As research for an upcoming book with Harvard Business Review Press, my colleagues and I have been interviewing entrepreneurs and business builders about the factors that drive success. We talked to David Lawee, vice president of corporate development at Google, about how he got to where he is and the role that luck has played [...]

My highlight so far at this year’s TED conference in Long Beach, California, has been meeting the extraordinary composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, after his moving and highly inspiring talk. Over 12 years, I have seen my share of TED presentations, and this was one of the most special. Whitacre is a contemporary composer known [...]