You Cannot Innovate By Copying.

I Started Netsuite. Netsuite Was My Idea. I Called Up Evan Goldberg And Said, 'we're Going To Do Erp On The Internet, Software-as-a-service.' Six Months Later Marc Benioff, Finding Out What Netsuite Was Doing, And Kind Of Copied It.

You Realize That Life Is Short And Fragile; And When You Are Facing Walls Of Water, You Understand Your Own Mortality Can Change And How Quickly Things Could Change.

When I Started Oracle, What I Wanted To Do Was To Create An Environment Where I Would Enjoy Working. That Was My Primary Goal. Sure, I Wanted To Make A Living. I Certainly Never Expected To Become Rich, Certainly Not This Rich. I Mean, Rich Does Not Even Describe This. This Is Surreal. And It Has Nothing To Do With Money. I Mean, You Buy Clothes With Money, And Cars. But I Really Wanted To Work With People I Enjoyed Working With, Who I Admired And Liked.

When You Find Errors In Conventional Wisdom-when Everyone Says A And A Is Not True-you Gain Competitive Advantage. Only A Few Times Do You Have To Find Errors In Conventional Wisdom To Make A Living.

I Saw That We Needed To Grow But Our Top Line Wasn't Growing, So We Had To Find Other Ways To Grow The Business. We Had To Reshape Our Business And Acquire Share In A Non Conventional Way. But Most Tech Leaders Don't Come Out Of A Business Background. They Really Have A Parochial Point Of View. All They Know Are The Go-go Years Of Silicon Valley. That's The Environment In Which They Were Raised.