A business exists because the consumer is willing to pay you his money. You run a business to satisfy the consumer. That isn't marketing. That goes way beyond marketing.

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 in any organization, including bureaucrats and politicians, are always attached to the obsolete; the obsolescent; the things that should have worked but didn't; the things that once were productive and no longer are.

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the 'naturals,' the ones who somehow know how to teach.

An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic.

Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.