Which one are you?

Missionary

Mercenary

When it comes to these three questions: 1. Where is the world right now? 2. Where is it going? 3. And why?, no one is exploring these questions better than Charlie Rose.

At the recent TechCruch Disrupt Conference, Charlie sits down with John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (a venture capital firm). Together with KPCB's partners, John has backed many of America's best entrepreneurial leaders, including:

• Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt: Google
• Jeff Bezos: Amazon
• Scott Cook, Bill Campbell: Intuit
• And the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec

What I liked about this interview is that John mentions some pretty significant ideas that are worth their weight in gold. They should especially be taken note of if entrepreneurs, companies and organizations want to stay relevant, as trends in today's emerging market continue to devour and dispose of traditional business practices.

For me, one sentiment that is noteworthy, is Doerr's comments on the next wave of evolution for the internet, which he mentioned will be about people, places and relationships.  I couldn't agree more.

Another consequential remark that he made was when he talked about the reason behind the success of many of the current tech behemoths (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook). He talks about their founders being missionaries (individuals interested in culture and on a mission to create something great for customers) instead of being mercenaries (those who are paranoid, are driven by fear and mainly looking for the deal). The contrast that John draws between the two is intriguing.

Ultimately, not just in the tech world, but across all industries, those who flourish and build strong communities around their brand will be determined by how you engage the battlefield; as a missionary or as a mercenary.

Check out the discussion between these two gents. Some pretty good stuff.