The only industries that function well are the industries that take responsibility for training. The Japanese, you know, assume that when you first come to work you know absolutely nothing. School isn't preparation for work and never was.

True marketing starts...with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, "What do we want to sell?" It asks, "What does the customer want to buy?"

Managers are agents of transformation, converting the workforce in developed countries from one of manual workers to one of highly educated knowledge workers.

There is no perfect strategic decision. One always has to pay a price. One always has to balance conflicting objectives, conflicting opinions, and conflicting priorities. The best strategic decision is only an approximation - and a risk.

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.

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.

The "non-profit" institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its "product" is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their "product" is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.