Keeping my children’s feet on the ground. It’s challenging as you become wealthier and wealthier in life, and you see how money very often — third or fourth generation — destroys people. Their inability to appreciate it, understand it, not abuse it. I think I’ve equipped my children well.

I’m very happy about it. You know, a kid from the Hill being elected to the Hall of Fame. Proud of it.

Well, I’m proud of all of them. I think the one that’s most personal to me is the lil’ Coat of Many Colors, because it talks about my mom, my parents, and kind of gives you an insight. It also covers bullying, acceptance and all that.

That’s easy, my trainees. In my field, receptor biology, the field is dominated by people that I trained. Kobilka is one example. I would say I have, for years — in all due modesty — I led the field. I passed that mantle to Kobilka. He has the newest technologies and this and that. But he’s just the limit case. There are dozens and dozens of people who trained with me that, if you go to any meeting on receptor biology and you look at the program, I don’t know, 30 to 40 percent of all the speakers will have either trained with me or trained with people who trained with me. They’re in the lineage. So that’s what I’m most proud of.

But the market was changing. The industry was changing. The scale was changing. And in the end we knew we would be either the last company to make it or the first to not make it. We were right on the edge. We thought we would be the last one that made it, but we were wrong. We were the first one that didn't. We put an end to the companies that tried to do that. We certainly made our fair share of mistakes, but in the end I think we should have taken a bit longer to realize the world was changing and just gone on to be a software company right off the bat.

We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked.

No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

I've participated in the hiring of maybe 5,000-plus people in my life. So I take it very seriously. You can't know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it's ultimately based on your gut.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.