The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is ... to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker

Effective people are not problem minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively.

Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial. Acclamation means that nobody has done the homework.

Strategic management is not a box of tricks or a bundle of techniques. It is analytical thinking and commitment of resources to action. But quantification alone is not planning. Some of the most important issues in strategic management cannot be quantified at all.

The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable assets of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge, workers, and their productivity.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

Tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. And even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the future. Being surprised by what happens is a risk that even the largest and richest company cannot afford, and even the smallest business need not run.