Quotes About Companies

The last few months have seen a welcome race to the top. Consumers have sent companies a clear signal that they do not want their purchasing habits to drive deforestation and companies are responding. Better still, companies are committing to working in partnership with suppliers, governments and NGOs to strengthen forest governance and economic incentives. It can be done and this Declaration signals a real intention to accelerate action.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

We represent companies from around the world who say, "I want to look at Japanese companies. I want to invest in Japan."

Junk food companies are acting very much like tobacco companies did 30 years ago.

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

I've been fortunate to work with companies that I endorse because I love their gear. Whether Music Man, Dunlop, or DiMarizo to me these companies have supported me in such a way that's invaluable.

I think it's important to have a blend just as we need to have by the way a mix of different opera companies and different arts companies.

Today, companies have to radically revolutionize themselves every few years just to stay relevant. That's because technology and the Internet have transformed the business landscape forever. The fast-paced digital age has accelerated the need for companies to become agile.

There's 20 companies that I have investments in - some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.

Over 30 years ago, Airbus was founded by a European consortium of French, German, and later Spanish and British companies to compete in the large commercial aircraft industry with U.S. companies.

They sense that there's a majority out there and that the emotions are all on the other side-if they can be heard. They think the politicians are going to yield to the emotions. I think the corporations are wrong about that. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania before they prevail.

Good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding; comparison companies set their goals and strategies based on bravado.

On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.

I think that the best companies are companies that have a real purpose.

There's been a lot companies that have shown "zero to one" kind of growth in the computer, internet software age. Facebook and Google are zero to one companies. Apple's iPhone was the first smartphone that really works, and of course, then you scale it horizontally, but the vertical component was really critical. Space X would also be one.

In a corporate context, companies have to try very hard to oppose the enticements of conventional wisdom. They must aim for the leaps, which means that companies have to do more than simply manage their knowledge, which is composed of the insights and understandings they already know. They also have to manage the knowledge-generation process. It's not just about, "Oh, we're going to create a data warehouse and we are going to invent a computerized filing system to get at all the stuff we know."

Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world.

While I'm a venture capitalist who invests in early-stage tech companies, I often feel like a professional emailer and conference call maker. I try to spend most of my time doing whatever the companies we are investors in need me to do.

Some of the power has shifted from companies to people. Using social media tools (blogs, wikis, tagging, etc.) more individuals are creating semi-spontaneous 'groundswells' of opinions to which companies and other institutions are realizing they must respond. From marketing to consumers organizations are being pulled into engaging with individuals.

"No one is doing what we're doing." This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can't even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.

Insurance companies don't necessarily want to invest in your wellnes because you're likely to switch insurance companies within 10 years. They don't benefit from their investment in you.

We have full disclosure in transparency of our audited, our financial audits. It's on our Web site. It is, I think 16 or 20- something pages, which most public companies or private companies and most ministries don't disclose. So we have always operated with financial integrity and full transparency.

The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous. We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world; the prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States; we do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada; an increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.

We need to create brand institutions. In the fortune 500 companies, 5 Indian companies are named while 15 are from China though we have similar kind of populations.

Invest in vanity. Buy stocks in high-profile companies whose products are designed to make you feel good and look good.

I don't feel like a different person. My motivation has always been to do technology apps and companies, not making money. Just because the money's come, nothing's changed.

After trying several unreliable web site hosts, I signed up with NitroTek and was pleased to discover there is a reliable, easy to work with service available to individuals and companies who want to keep a solid presence on the net. NitroTtek is a helpful, no-hassles company to work with.

A core part of the global market is what might be called the 'Nike Economy' - footloose companies that play countries against one another while seeking subcontractors with the lowest wages and cheapest conditions.

I've always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it's important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.

I think there are probably too many asset management companies in the world, and I think the place to be is either big or small. The area where it is probably more difficult to be is in the middle ground, where you've got that cost of regulation, you've got the cost of buying your own research, you've got all the costs of running an asset management company without the benefits of a big income producing asset.

There are no record companies in Waikiki.

I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn't survive. The reason we have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year.

There is much work to do to protect forests from over-timbering and oceans and lakes from over-fishing. We need to encourage and reward companies that create jobs to reduce the carbon footprints of offices and buildings and homes.

We're getting companies to invest in Canada, to expand their workforces, to do more R&D. I think people are looking at Canada and realizing we're a place that is building for the long term and where the world's going to be.

Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance.

We are also fortunate in being in quite a sheltered environment, in terms of people moving on to do other things, because there are relatively few companies in Scotland that are looking for the skill set that we've developed.

The good music companies do an amazing thing. They have people who can pick the person that's gonna be successful out of 5,000 candidates. And there's not enough information to do that - it's an intuitive process.

Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.

It is a health care law [ObamaCare] that is basically forcing companies to lay people off, cut people's hours, move people to part-time. It is not just a bad health care law, it is a job-killing law.

What we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we've got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September - which hurt the airline industry - it would not bring the whole group crashing down.

I wouldn't say that we're proactively out there hunting down brands to try to fulfill some piece of a larger battle plan or something. If they have things they want to get to us, we're somewhat easily accessible through our managers and record companies.

By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society.

And these [pharmaceutical] companies are still threatening to sue. And it's like, you know, do you not have a conscience? Do you not want the world to be a better place? You're still making a profit. How much more of a profit do you want to make?

It's the unlikely juxtaposition of creativity and logic which causes the wooliness and confusion around the term 'innovation'. Everybody wants to be innovative; many companies and ideas are proclaimed to be innovative and no one doubts that innovation is a money spinner. And, thus, we are all looking for the magic formula. Well, here you go: Creativity + Iterative Development = Innovation.

Ben & Jerry's evolved into what it is doing and is trying to transition its supply chain, but this is essentially retrofitting. In the social enterprise movement, we see companies whose essence, the products they make, the reason they exist from day one, is because these people see something out in the world that they cannot accept.

Some technologies don't pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here.

We're living in a different world now in terms of employee needs, and companies have to offer alternative methods for getting the work done. Even under the most difficult circumstances you can have creative flexibility.

Part of our brand is that we're pretty understated in what we do. If you look at other technology companies, they might preannounce things, and it will be a couple years before they really happen, and they don't happen in the way they said they would.