All of his advice springs from experience. When he grew up in San Jose, there were no how-to manuals on how to build a computer, much less start a tech business. While briefly attending the University of California in Berkeley, he met Steve Jobs through a mutual friend.

"I knew Steve for five years before we started Apple," Wozniak said. "Once a year, he would come into town, take something I had designed for free, for fun, and turn it into something to make money."

Not long after Apple was founded, he created the Apple I, a design built largely in Jobs' bedroom (not the garage). Wozniak's knowledge of electronics meshed with Jobs' marketing skills, and by 1983, Apple had a stock value of $985 million.

Sharing the credit

Wozniak is quick to share his success with his many mentors, beginning with his father, an electrical engineer.

"When I had questions and got interested in his field, he would pull out blackboards," he said. "He was patient. He was a good teacher and absolutely never left me behind in learning. He knew where my head was at, what level of mathematics I could understand, that sort of thing. So he was a great mentor."

Next was a high school teacher.

"He had a better program than any of the local colleges in electronics," Wozniak said. "He knew what the state of our minds was as students and what equipment we had, and he wrote his own material rather than use a canned book that is the same for everybody in the country."

Ron Wayne, an engineer at Atari, almost became a mentor but instead is an interesting footnote in the Apple story.

"He talked to us about how to start a business," he said. "Steve (Jobs) and I were going to each own 45 percent, and he would own 10 percent. After a few weeks, he said he wanted out and sold his 10 percent for a few hundred dollars. With the information he had at that time, it probably was a good decision."

Of course, if he had held that stock until 2010, it would have been worth $2.6 billion. Mike Markkula then stepped in, not only with $250,000 in funding but with an unselfish desire to help two young entrepreneurs.

"Mike Markkula was very instrumental," Wozniak said. "He invested, he owned as much stock as Steve Jobs and myself, but he wasn't after any publicity or notoriety. He was more of a try-to-stay-low type person, so all of the PR didn't include him. But he was really the person who set up the company and our original culture, right from day one."

It was on a flight to New York City with Markkula that Wozniak first heard the word "mentor."

"He had made money, he knew how business worked," he said. "He knew how to judge markets. And he started teaching us. What are the job roles that you have to create to have a technology company, what are the responsibilities of each person, how do you hire, how are you being professional?

"Really, he gave us the fundamental start that made us quite a bit different from a lot of other startups, in addition to our great product. I'll never forget that. It made all the difference. If you see a good mentor, you want to be a mentor when it's your turn."

Markkula is a big reason why Wozniak today is such a strong proponent of mentorships, whether from inside or outside the company.

"I would give computers to people, but I always told them the way they could pay me back was to pay it forward to others when they made something and were successful," he said.

One key way that Wozniak contributes is through education, a lifelong passion. "My goal was to be an engineer first and a teacher second," he said.

It's easy for the cofounder of Apple to write a big check, but he also contributed his time through an unpublicized teaching stint in a local elementary school.

"That was a very big, important part of my life," Wozniak said. "I did it for eight years straight. My course for fifth-graders would be 200 school hours per year. I got up to teaching sixth- through ninth-graders, and I also would teach classes of teachers on occasion."

Any business can encourage veteran or even retired employees to mentor newer workers.

"I think it's such an important thing to set an example, because if you have a good mentor, you want to be a mentor when it's your turn," he said. "When you are successful, you give to others and help them. When the movie `Pay it Forward' movie came out, everybody said, `that's Woz!"

Encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit

The second piece of advice that HR professionals can put to work is to cultivate an environment that encourages employees to think and act as entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurship requires a three-pronged approach.

"To me, good entrepreneurships are the ones who include the technical, the marketing and the business," he said. For example, although he was a tech genius and Jobs was a marketing whiz, Apple didn't take off until Markkula added his business savvy.

Wozniak elaborates on those three focuses:

• Technical. "Make something you want to use, because you're forced to make the products better and better for yourself. What can we do that will be better than anyone else? What are the steps to get there? You have to build it. You may have a great idea to change the world, but if you don't have a good designer, you won't have a good product."

• Business. "If you don't make money and bring your product (or service) to the world, you're not going to change people's lives."

• Marketing. "You want to have a marketing person who understands the market and would want the product themselves. You want to make it so beautiful and perfect that nothing could be better. That's what Steve Jobs did."

Finally, and perhaps most importantly in Wozniak's view, employees will never be entrepreneurial unless they have the freedom to fail.

"You always learn something and are ready for the next project you are going to do," he said "Even if it's not successful, your mind develops. If you can design better than other people, like me, you're lucky and don't have to worry about a job. Always keep in the mind the next project you are going to do."

Wozniak jokingly recalled the early days of Apple.

"Steve and I had this Apple I computer we were going to introduce, but we also had Apple II ready even before we sold the Apple I," he said. "The Apple I ripped everybody off."

Think different

Where do HR people find these types of employees? Anywhere, and sometimes in unexpected places. The ability to turn ideas into final products is more important than a college degree, Wozniak said, drawing from his classroom experience.

"You're called intelligent if you do well on tests," he said. "And you do well on tests by getting the same answer as everyone else. What if you have your own answer? One of the best things I ever did was partly because I had no money and had to look for ways to do them inexpensively."

Mentoring and entrepreneurship alone won't create a top-notch workforce and business, but when the co-founder of the world's most successful company talks, smart employers pay attention.

"Steve (Jobs) asked me if we could have imagined when we started out what Apple would become," Wozniak said. "Of course not. When we started, we were just trying to have some success. We were amazed that a computer could be built that could hold a single song. However, we knew we had a good company and a great product, and we had an opportunity to be one of those companies that lives forever."