The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.

A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.

...high end does not necessarily equal high price. It's a matter of attitude.

One reason (among many) that women may well take over the world of "virtual enterprises" is that they seem to have a greater instinct for networking. And the unfettered-by-machismo males who have taken to networking will do better than those who shun it as "sissy stuff." But truth is, it has always been the age of "networkers"; and in an era where organizations depend more and more on tenuously connected outsiders to get the job done, it will only become so.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

'In Search of Excellence' - even the title - is a reminder that business isn't dry, dreary, boring, or by the numbers. Life at work can be cool - and work that's cool isn't confined to Tiger Woods, Yo-Yo Ma, or Tom Hanks. It's available to all of us and any of us.

Every managerial act must be seen as an unequivocal support for urgency in pursuit of constant testing, change, and improvement.