I find more and more executives less and less well informed about the outside world, if only because they believe that the data on the computer printouts are ipso facto information.

...because knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence.

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it.

Management must take the lead in making obsolete its own products and services rather than waiting for a competitor to do so.

All companies are service companies; some also manufacture products.

Once the facts are clear the decisions jump out at you.

The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the MANUAL WORKER in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of KNOWLEDGE WORK and the KNOWLEDGE WORKER.