Everyone thinks I'm a smart arse who can solve any bloody problem. I'm not. I'm just a very old businessman and a very experienced businessman who made every mistake in the book and can recognise one when I see one.

How do you know you have won? When the energy is coming the other way and when your people are visibly growing individually and as a group.

It horrifies me that ethics is only an optional extra at Harvard Business School.

There is practically no area of business where the difference between rhetoric and actuality is greater than in the handling of people.

The task of industry is continuously, year on year, to make more and better things, using less of the world's resources.

People are unlikely to know that they need a product which does not exist and the basis of market research in new and innovative products is limited in this regard.

Problems can only be solved by the people who have them. You have to try and coax them and love them into seeing ways in which they can help themselves.