Wisdom in fragments

The virus doesn't discriminate, but our response to it has. We've seen how stigma and discrimination have fueled this epidemic more than the virus itself ever could.

We are at a crossroads where we can either win this battle against HIV or we can lose it. The science is there, the tools are there, but what we need now is the political will and the resources to finish the job.

Former Executive Director of UNAIDS, leading global HIV/AIDS response efforts

The business plan is about management not exposition, it shows commitment to milestones.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

The plan is the lists, milestones and responsibilities- not the document that describes them.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

By far the most common is underestimating expenses. When industries do barely double-digits if their lucky, business plans ought not to be showing EBIT or EBITDA of 50-70% – that doesn't mean people are smart, it means they haven't understood the industry.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

The human species is different now to thirty years ago, we have an electronic extension to our DNA that gives so many distractions, so much multi-tasking, and so little time to focus on a single thought for any extended period of time.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

All forecasts are wrong- all business plans are wrong- but they're very useful for management. It's not just a one-time picture, it's an on-going story. You're looking for lines not dots about how a company proceeds.

Founder of Palo Alto Software and business planning expert

What makes Guantánamo so horrible is the fact that the majority of these men are innocent and have no hope of release in the future. Our government has made no concrete steps to releasing these men.

There were people transferred to Guantánamo who were sold for bounties, transferred there because of the watch they wore, where they slept or even just because they were Arabic men in Afghanistan. They were rounded up, brought to Guantánamo and many of them have remained there over 11 years.

Guantánamo has created more terrorists than have ever passed through. It is the major recruiting tool used… it inhibits the United States' ability to talk about human rights on a global scale… when you have the UN calling-up the United States on their human rights abuses at Guantánamo it makes it very difficult for the United States to then go to other places in the world and demand that they apply human rights.

It was the brainchild of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfwitz. They picked Guantánamo as they believed it was beyond the reach of all law. Obviously United States law, but also international law and beyond that the Geneva Conventions. It was picked purposely to be a legal black hole where the United States could bring people for interrogation purposes.

One of the unique aspects of a prize is that when you put a dollar up in a prize purse, you're incentivising teams around the world to spend many times that dollar in pursuit of the competition. You are leveraging dollars in a completely different way- in a philanthropic pursuit.

The end of an X-Prize is the beginning of a new market, or a new market opportunity. We are nothing more than a distinct channel to that market.

We've found that innovation really happens when you constrain a problem very specifically and then throw it out to the world to solve. It's a slightly different way of thinking.

When you put a prize out there, you legitimise the pursuit of something which is often pretty audacious. Legitimacy also brings about renewed focus and vigour on the problem at hand- it's a little like the context of a 4 minute mile… nobody thought it was possible until it was achieved.

One of the unique aspects of a prize, and particularly an X-Prize, is that it doesn't require letters after your name, specific degrees or backgrounds or so on. We simply define what it is we want solved, and award the prize to whomever is able to accomplish that.