Sometimes you have to destroy your business in order to save it.

The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.

Companies, like people, don't much like to change.

We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.

Until the nineteen-seventies, Western countries paid little attention to corruption overseas, and bribery was seen as an unpleasant but necessary part of doing business there. In some European countries, businesses were even allowed to deduct bribes as an expense.

Defense contractors are able to reap tremendous profits while rarely confronting the risks for which those profits are supposed to be the reward.

All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.