One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to be awed by the scale and success of early-20th-cent ury efforts to transform strong-willed human beings into docile employees.
Like a child star whose fame fades as the years advance, many once-innovative companies become less so as they mature.
Obviously, you don’t have to be religious to be moral, and beastly people are sometimes religious.
An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It’s always redefining its ‘core business’ in ways that open up new avenues for growth.
Influence is like water. Always flowing somewhere.
For every person who can imagine a possibility there are tens of thousands who are stuck in the greased grooves of history.
I am an ardent supporter of capitalism – but I also understand that while individuals have inalienable, God-given rights, corporations do not.
Business leaders must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty.
You can’t build an adaptable organization without adaptable people – and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to.
There are as many foolhardy ways to grow as there are to downsize.
In an ideal world, an individual’s institutional power would be correlated perfectly with his or her value-add. In practice, this is seldom the case.
We live in a moment that is pregnant with possibility.
Fact is, inventing an innovative business model is often mostly a matter of serendipity.
Any company that cannot imagine the future won’t be around to enjoy it.
I don’t know whether the universe contains any evidence of intelligent design, but I can assure you that thousands of everyday products do not.
Only stupid questions create wealth.
Taking risks, breaking the rules, and being a maverick have always been important but today they are more crucial than ever.
In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies.
In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge.
The problem is not one of prediction. It is one of imagination.
What matters in the new economy is not return on investment, but return on imagination.