Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole!

People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.

Though progress starts with the imagination, only work can make things happen. And work itself works best when fueled, again by the imagination.

Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits.

Anything in excess is a poison.

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task. ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert. ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil.