I haven't invented anything earth-shattering. If I could be said to have one noteworthy ability compared with the average person, it's that I have a keen interest in reading the direction and timing of paradigm shifts.

Whatever the country, whatever the culture, whatever the time, when you become a big enough organization, you start to collapse and slow down.

Jack's [Ma Yun ] theory is that whoever controls data controls the world.

I thought I might spend the rest of my time on golf. But thinking about it now, I'm happy playing whenever I have some downtime in my busy schedule, and even if I had all the time I wanted to play, my score probably wouldn't be very good.

I would say that hardware is the bone of the head, the skull. The semiconductor is the brain within the head. The software is the wisdom and data is the knowledge.

I'd met Simon [Segars] for the first time in London. He struck me as a quiet, natural-born engineer and an orthodox successor [to East]. He has a home in Silicon Valley, and he said it's just a few minutes' drive away from mine.

I don't care about the sort of things that will bring in chump change over the next two or three years. I think I'm better than others at sniffing out things that will bear fruit in 10 or 20 years while they're still at the seed stage, and I'm more willing to take the risks that entails.

I think I would have kept in contact with venture capital investors and entrepreneurs. I'm sure staying involved as something like a coach would be fun. If I handed over the reins to a successor, I wouldn't stick around [to pull strings] like a retired emperor.