WASHINGTON — BAI Retail Delivery gave onetime Apple evangelistGuy Kawasaki the job of waking up the Thursday morning crowd, andthe always individualistic speaker came with a promise that histalk would consist of 10 points that – if executed – would deliversuccess.

He did not promise the path would be simple.

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But just attempting to hit the 10 points might well energize themarketing programs of most institutions, said the best-sellingauthor.

Point 1: “Decide to make meaning. That you want to change theworld,” said Kawasaki, who worked in the Macintosh team in theearly days of Apple. That group didn't want to make “another”computer. It wanted to trigger big change.

Point 2: “Make a mantra,” a slogan that captures what you areabout. Most mission statements utterly miss this point, saidKawasaki, who made fun of what he called Wendy's verbose and hollowmission statement that he noted was par for the course. Kawasakistressed that a mantra should be a handful of words. Punchy.Memorable.

Point 3: “Jump to the next curve.” It's not good enough to getto where we are; success is about seeing the next step, as SteveJobs did with the iPhone, for instance, noted Kawasaki.

Point 4: “Roll the dice.” Take your best guess about where youneed to be.

Point 5. “Don't worry, be crappy.” There isn't enough time towait for perfection. Often you have to go with what you have – thenmake it better, advised Kawasaki.

Point 6: “Let 100 flowers bloom.” Accept that there is nocontrolling what consumers do with your efforts. The Macdevelopment team, elaborated Kawasaki, thought they had good wordprocessing and spreadsheets. But what really saved the Mac – andApple itself, said Kawasaki – was the desktop publishing built intothe Mac. Who knew? Apple didn't, suggested Kawasaki, but thecompany had the smarts to let that flower bloom.

Point 7: “Polarize people.” Said Kawasaki: “Great innovationpolarizes.” If everybody likes it, probably it missed the mark, hesaid.

Point 8: “Churn, baby, churn.” This, said Kawasaki, was “thehardest lesson I learned at Apple.” Today's brilliant innovationrequires tomorrow's brilliant innovation to continue staying ontop. The process is continuing.

Point 9: “Niche thyself.” Really owning a particular specialtyis, suggested Kawasaki, much more rewarding than being a blandmainstream player.

Point 10: “Perfect your pitch.” Know how to tell your story and,in an aside, Kawasaki advised the optimal number of slides in anyPowerPoint show is 10 and the show itself should never go over 20minutes.

Point 11: “Don't let the bozos get you down.” Call this a bonuspoint.

Bozos, said Kawasaki, are just about everywhere. He admitted tohis own bozo moments (he declined to interview for the CEO job atthe company that turned out to be a Yahoo – a decision, he figured,that might have cost him $2 billion).

Did Kawasaki wake the audience at the Washington ConventionCenter? For sure, his was not another financial conference talk.That is beyond debate.