Thomas Alva Edison received 1,093 patents, 4 posthumously. Perhaps the greatest inventor in history, Edison was a grammar-school dropout who had just three months of formal education. Edwin H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera; Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and one of the nation’s richest individuals; and R. Buckminster Fuller, social theorist, all dropped out of Harvard. Henry Ford never went to high school.

The fact that you don’t have a formal education shouldn’t stop you. The world is full of intelligent people who haven’t had the benefit of a formal education. Conversely, you may have graduated from a top university, but I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on it. When my dad, a former assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, interviewed job candidates, he would remind them that he wasn’t impressed just because they graduated from Harvard, Yale, or another prestigious law school. He would tell the young lawyers, “I’ll be impressed when the school brags about you.”

Stanford psychologist Nevitt Sanford has said, “Leaving college may leave a student with a sense of unfinished business that will, in some cases, provide motivation for learning for the rest of his life.”

An exceptionally high IQ could mean something in some fields, but studies show that the threshold for creativity is an IQ of about 130. After that, Business Week reports, IQ doesn’t make much difference—such nonintellectual traits, such as values and personality, become more important. In the end, product is king.

My own philosophical and social wiring were installed primarily by three people: Daddy, who was bright, well reasoned, honest, and cool under fire; and Mother and Nana, two strong, savvy, and creative liberated ladies. Their taste and social skills had no equal. In college, my wrestling coach, Jim Peckham, taught me that to win was not enough; one had to “earn the right to win.” Add to this the gifts bestowed upon me by my wife, Sheryl, and I was good to go the distance. I was always encouraged to try things, even at the risk of failure. I was brought up to believe that I could accomplish anything I put my mind to doing.