Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are manual labor.

Thus, for those who are willing to go out into the field, to look and to listen, changing demographics is both a highly productive and a highly dependable innovation opportunity.

If you want it, measure it. If you can't measure it, forget it.

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity

The more successful the unit, the more difficult it is to make sure that the large company doesn't put the same expectations on it as it does for the rest of the company. When it's a new venture, whether it's outside or inside the business, it's a child. And you don't put a 40-pound pack on a 6-year-old's back when you take her hiking.

More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.

Systematic decision review also shows executives their own weaknesses, particularly the areas in which they are simply incompetent. In these areas, smart executives don't make decisions or take actions. They delegate.