“I used to always say ‘I never went to business school and I never read a business book’. But now I think maybe I should have read a few.” – Oprah Winfrey Oprah is one of the most successful female business executives ever with an entirely self-made empire, but even she can recognise the importance…
“A business’ flexibility in adapting to change and market dynamics will mark the winners and losers in this fast-changing Internet Age. Flexibility is a tight pairing of speed and agility. Linking businesses together using information is at the center of value creation in the Internet Age.” – Michael Dell, US Chairman of Dell Computer Corporation.…
“I think we have to lead people by being good listeners. That is to say, we lead in a company such as ours by drawing out ideas from people… we can’t simply issue commands.” – Minoru Makirhara, Mitsubishi corporation. It used to be the case that a manager would simply bark orders at their staff…
“Business leaders must not cling to old ways of doing business, or allow inertia or complacency to prevent them from making the decisions that they will eventually be forced to make.” – Patricia Hewitt, British government minister Complacency is one of the biggest causes of problems for businesses as they grow. Unlike in the early…
“I don’t know the statistics, but I’m willing to guess that the executives of corporate America spend 70 to 80 percent of their time in meetings. I do know that most of those meetings… are 70 to 80 percent posturing and leveling… The posturing is gratuitous, and the leveling is better done elsewhere. This alone…
“You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.” – Harold S. Geneen, US telecommunications entrepreneur. It might seem a bit counter-intuitive to have to work backwards to be able to achieve your goals,…
“If someone monopolizes the market for personal finance software, are you going to go after that company and dismantle it? I would contend no. Because these temporary monopolies are a prize for innovation. They’re the incentive for innovation.” – W. Brian Arthur, US economist. Business owners that enter a market which is already dominated by…
“I can’t tell you the number of times that I meet with Internet entrepreneurs or executives, and how little theory they have, and how little cognitive behaviour they seem to exhibit about what it is they are doing.” – Jay S. Walker, US entrepreneur. Even if you don’t have a formal business education, that’s not…
“Coopetition: Cooperation between competitors… especially common in the computer industry, where consumers want to know in advance that a broad range of companies will support a given technology… companies will compete on actual products even as they cooperate on technical standards, sacrificing a degree of independence to increase the odds of success for the technology…
“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves — to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.” – Stewart B. Johnson It’s easy to lose sight of your own personal business goals if you focus too intently on what other people in…
