Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.

There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.

It is commonly believed that innovations create changes - but few ever do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already happened.

Most of what you hear about entrepreneurshi p is all wrong. It's not magic; it's not mysterious; and it has nothing to do with genes. It's a discipline and, like any discipline, it can be learned.

The person who will make the greatest contribution to a company is the mature person-and you cannot have maturity if you have no life or interest outside the job.