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Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

Marketplaces by their nature tend to grow faster than most other companies.

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

When businesses go through hard times, through down markets, what do they do is they challenge every basic assumption of how they operate. They innovate. They create disruption for a while that leads them to even greater heights when the economy turns around.

Growth is kinda built into everyone's genes. It's built into management's genes, the salesman's genes, the investors' desires. People expect companies to grow.

So many technologies start out with a burst of idealism, democratization, and opportunity, and over time, they close down and become less friendly to entrepreneurship, to innovation, to new ideas. Over time, the companies that become dominant take more out of the ecosystem than they put back in.

Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth stops that things get tough.

Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.

It's harder than ever to build an enduring company. As soon as a product strikes a nerve with customers, competitors emerge globally because the costs to start are so low.

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.