To succeed you will soon learn as I did the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education - literacy both verbal and numerical and communication skills.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration discrimination organization innovation and communication.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise you will have the gift the style the sharpness the clarity and the emotions to affect other people.

Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our financial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.

Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work over-mortgaged and worried that life will be even tougher for their children.

So I did in fact spend two and a half years in the Middlesbrough car park practising skills. But if you spend four or five or six hours a day practising you get better.

So for a year I spent all my time hiding from Jack Charlton in the car park practising my skills.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.

A lot of people including business leaders think the future belongs to China. Globalization is not a zero-sum game but we need to hone our skills to stay in play.