Quote collection
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable assets of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge, workers, and their productivity."
"Efficiency is doing better what is already being done."
"I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. ...I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn. That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in."
"I have been saying for many years that we are using the word 'guru' only because 'charlatan' is too long to fit into a headline."
"Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. SO for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time."
"There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character."
"One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it."
"There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable."
"In most organizations, the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle."
"Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information."
"This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new "class conflict" between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work... or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work - still abysmally low - will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people."
"You must accept that if the computer is a tool, it is the job of tool user to know what to use it for."
"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation."
"Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will be taken over by a Central government"
"We have only one alternative: either to build a functioning industrial society or see freedom itself disappear in anarchy and tyranny."
"Leaders shouldn?t attach moral significance to their ideas: Do that, and you can?t compromise."
"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service."
"The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer."
"One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses."
"The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization - where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector - and especially in its relationship to business."