There are two equalizers in life: the Internet and education.
John T. Chambers
Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.
There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don't know they have been hacked.
When you're a large company with significant market share, it's tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, but we view them as an opportunity.
We'll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We're going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that's the future of leadership.
If every company becomes a technology company, business models and transitions are going to occur. From a CEO's perspective, this is going to be the biggest technology transition of all times.
In France, President Francois Hollande is leveraging the next wave of the Internet to jumpstart economic reforms and create jobs for hundreds of thousands of citizens. A historically socialist government, France has had the courage to quickly implement unique partnerships with the business community to drive entrepreneurial spirit and thinking.
Often, what I tell a new CEO asking for advice, or one of my own new leaders, is the two most important decisions that your team is going to watch is the first person you hire and the first person you promote - because you are saying that's the type of person I want.
Organized crime and rogue nation states and terrorists are very much focused on the Internet of things. The challenge that goes with connectivity is always security. The bad guys go wherever the return is, and now it's more lucrative for bad guys to focus on cybercrime than traditional crime.
People who might normally have to travel hours to a distant city to see a cardiologist can now do so virtually, through Cisco technology, at their local hospital or health clinic. Clinicians use technology to share patient reports and diagnostic images and collaborate on cases.
We know that veterans have valuable skills and experiences that are highly sought after in today's workforce.
Understand what you are acquiring and protect it at all costs. You are acquiring people and next-generation products. You are making an investment that together you can grow faster, make more profits, and take more market share.
Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.
Do you have the same vision of where industry is going as the target of your acquisition? If visions differ, you might get together economically for a while, but then you are going to have problems.
This will be the first time in my lifetime I'm voting for a Democrat. I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I've already voted.
Everything becomes connected, and cyber security becomes the top issue for CEOs. An average company has 40-60 security vendors, and they have a violation every three months with viruses.
The No. 1 country in the world to do business in is which one? To locate where you want to create jobs, where you want to have a great market? It's Canada. Even in Russia, you can build a Silicon Valley outside of Moscow.
Our success at Cisco has been defined by how we anticipate, capture, and lead through market transitions. Over the years, I've watched iconic companies disappear - Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment - as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.
By exciting citizens about the new digital opportunity, breaking down silos of competing groups to form a truly open innovation ecosystem and shifting day-to-day resources to focus on big long-term investments for the future, countries can ensure that they break through and bridge the digital gap.
If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.
I don't enjoy politics. I like to get things done, and I like Republicans and Democrats, and that doesn't always work well.
I learned another lesson from Jack Welch. It was in 1998, and at that time, we were one of the most valuable companies in the world. I said, 'Jack, what does it take to have a great company?' And he said, 'It takes major setbacks and overcoming those.'
I wasn't always interested in technology. I had been a student for a long time - I'd earned a bachelor's degree, a law degree, and an MBA - and decided that I wanted to work in a large corporation, focusing on finance and law, in either New York or Chicago.
The political gridlock in Washington leads us to conclude that policymakers don't have the ability to put the public finances of the U.S. on a sustainable footing.
Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don't reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that's true of people. And I think it's true of countries.
To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country.
I think at least my philosophy of leadership is you focus more on the areas you have to improve or the mistakes than you do on your successes. And that's just how I am in real life. I don't want to let down my customers, my employees, my shareholders.
It's important to remember that finding a job is only the beginning of a smooth transition to civilian life for our troops - as employers, we must also ensure their ongoing success.
When a leader doesn't do his or her job, it isn't just a problem with the person. They take their whole organization down.
Almost every move in the market is either a move to align with where Cisco is going or to align to compete against us or to utilize that technology.
When a market isn't in transition, gaining market share is hard - you're fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors.
I had an issue with dyslexia before they understood what dyslexia was. One of my teachers, Mrs. Anderson, taught me to look at it like a curveball. The ball breaks the same way every time. Once you get used to it, you can handle it pretty well.
Our next CEO needs to thrive in a highly dynamic environment, to be capable of accelerating what is working very well for Cisco and disrupting what needs to change.
We're living through the second Industrial Revolution.
If we're going to acquire, what are we going to do differently? We came up with six rules of thumb. Whenever I've violated two of them, I usually get into trouble.
It's connectivity that really makes the industrial Internet work: it's giving the right information at the right time to the right person or right machine to make the right decision.
What makes Silicon Valley really work? It's a unique combination of great educational institutions - especially at Stanford - that generate engineers and a culture that starts companies.
We're very much focused on full shareholder-value return. We have to get our stock moving. But I won't do something in the short run that I don't feel is right for the long run. That, I've watched many CEOs do.
There's a lot to learn from President Clinton. It kills me as a strong Republican saying it, but he was the most effective president during my lifetime. And when business got out of line, he smacked them.
I don't make fun of people. I call people by what they want to be called. What does your best friend call you? What does your spouse call you? It helps you emotionally connect to people.
The industry has to learn how to do CEO succession well. If your definition of success is Intel or Microsoft or HP or IBM, that's not a good track record, and yet they are the most successful ones.
Once you put in backdoors, once you allow a government to intercept anything they want, you have to give it to other governments around the world. Once you do that, there is no privacy; there is no security. There is no protection for democracy.
When I think about developing solutions, I think about how we can use technology to make a difference.
In 2008, we began an initiative to outsource projects from our Israeli office to three companies in the Palestinian Territories.
As a country, we must come together to provide the training, certifications, and jobs that our veterans have earned and deserve.
Today's world requires a different leadership style - more collaboration and teamwork, including using Web 2.0 technologies. If you had told me I'd be video blogging and blogging, I would have said, 'No way.' And yet our 20-somethings in the company really pushed me to use that more.
As a leader, you don't get too high on the highs or let the bumps balance down. Every leader over time has probably equal amount of good luck or bad luck - or, you could argue, has good opportunities or challenges.
The business community is very comfortable with Romney.
Every company, city, and country is becoming digital, navigating disruptive markets, and Cisco's role in the digital transformation has never been more important.
Digital is going to have five times the impact than the information era. Just because you led the first transition as a company or country, that doesn't mean you will lead in this one.
