When I was a senior in college, I attended an inspiring conference at West Point called the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs, which paired political science majors with cadets in the hopes of building future civilian-military relationships.

Broadcom is the descendent of a nearly 60-year-old unit of the original Hewlett-Packard. Semiconductor companies are like enterprise software companies: they don't die easily.

Salesforce acquires companies - it has snapped up 55 since 2006 - that are either more innovative or that have pioneered market segments that Salesforce hasn't yet cracked.

When I published a book earlier this year about Uber, the most common question I got about it was how many of the tumultuous events of 2017 I was able to include. My gag-line response: I managed to cover the first 17 scandals of the year, but not Nos. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and so on.

What makes Samsung so mysterious is that it's not altogether clear who leads the company or what its leaders do. The company follows an avowedly Confucian model of consensus-driven decision-making, values bone-crushingly hard work, and shows tremendous deference to the founding Lee family, despite its lack of a controlling interest in its shares.