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.
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement. Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two and only two functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.
The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.
Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.
If you want it, measure it. If you can’t measure it, forget it.
If you want to predict the future, create it.
The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.
There are only two things in a business that make money – innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.
The large organization has to learn to innovate, or it won’t survive.
Education gives you neither experience nor wisdom.
When the business grows, the person who founded it is incredibly busy. Rapid growth puts an enormous strain on a business. You outgrow your production facilities. You outgrow your management capabilities.
Mother Teresa’s numerical results were not her greatest contribution. Instead, she made the world-and especially India-conscious of compassion.
They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions.
I’m a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don’t even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.
Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.