Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two - and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are 'costs'.

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.

There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they didn't.

If you have too many problems, maybe you should get out of business. There is no law that says a company must last forever.

Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. SO for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time.

By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.

What we are good at comes easy, and we believe that unless it comes hard, it can't be very good.