The final test of greatness in a CEO is how well he chooses a successor and whether he can step aside and let the successor run the company.

The productivity of people requires continuous learning, as the Japanese have taught us. It requires adoption in the West of the specific Japanese Zen concept where one learns to do better what one already does well.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

People are effective because they say 'no,' because they say, 'this isn't for me.'

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

The Pertinent Question is NOT how to do things right - but how to find the right things to do, and to concentrate resources and efforts on them.

If the feudal knight was the clearest embodiment of society in the early Middle Ages, and the "bourgeois" under Capitalism, the educated person will represent society in the post-capitalist society in which knowledge has become the central resource.