Hasan Riaz

Teddy Roosevelt on slowing down as you get older:

"We must all either wear out or rust out"

Alan Watts on making sure you don’t fool yourself with your own stories:

"Most people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is, with the world as they think about it, and talk about it, and describe it."

Acquired, on Microsoft's integrated value prop for Enterprise solutions: "if you make everything integrated together work well and come from one vendor, you no longer have to be best of breed. You don't have to compete with any point solutions, because you offer the full stack."

Less is More: When trying to make a point or change someone’s mind, often times less is more. More can over-burden “cognitive load”, no different than how working memory has limited capacity to take in a ton of new information (e.g. like trying to copy a phone number from memory)

David Kidder: "Nostalgia is the enemy of Growth. Nonconsensus is the epitome of Growth."

Ayn Rand: "You can avoid reality. But you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality". This is an apt analogy for over-motivated marketing/sales folks trying to optimize for the short-term, at the expense of fixing the real underlying (product) issue, or those who are gaming scorecards, rather than focusing on true financial bottom-line.

Miles Cannon-Brookes on the importance of disagreement within teams (especially applicable to team leaders):

"Disagreement with seniority in a constructive way usually shows that the team has their shit together. It means that they know more than you do and that's good. They inevitably should know more than I do."

The "Hungry Beast" and "Ugly Baby" analogy from "Creativity, Inc." is a powerful metaphor used to describe two competing forces in business.

The Hungry Beast:

- Represents the established, successful part of a business that demands constant feeding

- Symbolizes the need to meet short-term goals, deadlines, and market demands

- Requires immediate result

The power of having a small edge (Roger Federer): Won 54% of all points = 80% of all matches = ranked in the top 99.99% of all time players