Quote collection
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, Do you know what you're good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths? Few have even asked themselves these questions."
"Management and entrepreneurship are only two different dimensions of the same task. An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long."
"All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow."
"In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world."
"Conductors do not know how the oboe does its work, but they know what the oboe should contribute."
"Far too much reorganization goes on all the time. Organizitis is like a spastic colon."
"Ideas are like frog eggs: you've got to lay a thousand to hatch one."
"Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced."
"Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual. They fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work."
"Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation."
"Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure."
"You can't manage knowledge.Knowledge is between two ears and only between two ears."
"Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform."
"An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution."
"Most Americans do not know what their strengths are. When you ask them, they look at you with a blank stare, or they respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer."
"Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze."
"I find more and more executives less and less well informed about the outside world, if only because they believe that the data on the computer printouts are ipso facto information."
"Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'"
"If you're not living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space. The best way to predict the future is to create it."
"Our job in life is to make a positive difference, not prove we're right."