Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something. They should worry more about the cost of not doing it.

Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.

We need to put limits on how much an individual, group or business can spend on influencing an individual legislator or a whole set of legislators. Look at the vast sums that the NRA spends on getting all legislators to be soft on gun control. Legislators find it hard to refuse the NRA's largess when they need contributions to their political campaign wherever they can get them.

It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.

Most of the productivity gains appear to go to the top 1 percent. Most people don't have enough income and as a result, they borrow additional money by using their credit card and they fall into high debt. The result of the growing income gap is a slower growing GDP (too few people with money to spend) and a rising tide of indebtedness.

The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.

Many great ideas need refreshment and deeper analysis. "Freedom," for example, is a great idea but it has become a cliché.