As the chief technologist at a community marketing agency and in my previous endeavors I have lived through many of the triumphs and pitfalls chronicled in numerous business and marketing books.

• I learned, among other things, the value of a “sincere tie” at Watson’s IBM.
• I searched for excellence at Hewlett-Packard back during the days of the HP Way.
• My first startup (Momenta) died trying to cross Geoffrey Moore’s Chasm.
• I learned to start a project with a t-shirt design at Apple as instructed by Kawasaki.
• I bet on the value of internet community with the author’s of Net Gain (dedicated in part to the 3 founders of my current company).

I have built and launched products, hired and managed teams. I have debated the 5 P’s of marketing as they apply to my business, but it turns out I had never actually read about them. I became increasingly aware of my ignorance. Those of you who know me know that I am uncomfortable with ignorance.

And so the process of re-educating, re-making and re-branding my self continues.

“A person with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education.”

Studies have shown that the amount of formal education individuals have can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.

A recent study, published in the journal Neurology, suggests that once memory loss has begun, the rate of loss increases among those with more education.

So what it seems to be is that people who have more education have a better quality of life for longer should they succumb to Alzheimer’s. Because of alternate pathways in the brain they are not symptomatic as soon. So by the time Alzheimer’s becomes obvious, they are much further along in the degenerative process and therefore decline much more quickly from when the symptoms are noticed.