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As they grow, companies saturate their markets, become more complex and difficult to manage, and face larger and more entrenched competitors.

Businesses are going to innovate in how they bring prices down so people can shop the way they want.

As I spent tons of time with customers, not just in the United States, but in emerging markets, in Europe, in Latin America, top of mind for everybody is how do they drive growth for their business going forward.

Any business owner can tell you that if their company isn't performing profitably and up to standards, one of two things will happen: either you make changes to improve its efficiency, or a competitor will drive you out of business. Market forces have a way of cutting to the chase rather quickly.

Business is a string of seemingly impossible problems looking for solutions. Each problem you solve creates a new barrier to entry for your next competitor.

Lots of companies don't succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future.

When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.

One reason why upturns follow downturns is that downturns tend to overshoot. People get panicky, they're afraid to stay the course, so they start selling. The other thing is that I think, as entrepreneurs keep on waiting to produce new things, that there's an accumulation of as-yet-unexploited new ideas that keeps mounting up.

It's competition that forces companies to get out of their complacency.

Businesses typically look at issues like price, quality, time of delivery. They don't often think about social and environmental impact because they're focused on their financial bottom line.