With innovative companies and products like Tencent's WeChat messaging service and novel approaches to artificial intelligence and various business models, China rapidly is becoming an innovator in its own right.

As a new Googler, Porat spent some time learning the words that describe the Googley people who work in those buildings.

Amazon is pursuing something called Amazon Key, which lets its couriers unlock Prime customers' doors and deliver packages. It's pairing the service, which it plans to make available in 37 cities next month, with a camera so users will have intelligence inside and outside their homes, presumably boosting trust and lowering creepiness.

Apple is a military-like command-and-control organization where people lower down in the organization manage up. They are constantly preparing their boss who may be preparing their boss and their boss for a presentation to the CEO or to the executive team.

I'll admit, sometimes I've paid the bills with acting. You know the phrase, 'It's one for the money, two for the showreel.' I don't want that as a director. I don't want to compromise myself. There's a big old wide world out there. I want to explore it.

So many times I've heard people say that the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples won't really change anything other than some legal and financial stuff. It's a dumb argument: those legal and financial effects matter.

Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.

Because I didn't have much money, I bought a small shop that fit my budget. The previous six owners had closed their business in three years. The store had no people traffic and, because of that, I was able to focus on figuring out how to provide a better service to each and every one of the customers that did come through.