The business book
In: Big ideas simply explained
Start small, think big: Starting and growing the business. If you can dream it, you can do it -- There's a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? -- You can learn all you need to know about the competition's operation by looking in his garbage cans -- The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows -- Be first or be better -- Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket -- Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get -- Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward -- Nothing great is created suddenly -- The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel -- Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken -- A corporation is a living organism : it has to continue to shed its skin -- Without continuous growth and progress, success has no meaning -- If you believe in something, work nights and weekends -- it won't feel like work -- Lighting the fire: Leadership and human resources. Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing -- None of us is as smart as all of us -- Innovation must be invasive and perpetual: everyone, everywhere, all of the time -- Dissent adds spice, spirit, and an invigorating quality -- No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven -- A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way -- Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results -- Leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do -- The way forward may not be to go forward -- The more a person can do, the more you can motivate them -- Be an enzyme -- a catalyst for change -- The worst disease that afflicts executives is egotism -- Emotional intelligence is the intersection of heart and head -- Management is a practice where art, science, and craft meet -- A camel is a horse designed by committee -- The art of thinking independently, together -- Making money work: Managing finances. Do no let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business -- Executive officers must be free from avarice -- If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled -- Borrow short, lend long -- The interests of the shareholders are our own -- Make the best quality of goods at the lowest cost, paying the highest wages possible -- Utilize OPM -- other people's money -- Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom -- Debt is the worst poverty -- Cash is king -- Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked -- Return on equity is a financial goal that can become an own goal -- As the role of private equity has grown, so have the risks it poses -- Assign costs according to the resources consumed -- Working with a vision: Strategy and operations. Turn every disaster into an opportunity -- If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses -- The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the main thing -- You don't need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person -- Don't get caught in the middle -- The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do -- Synergy and other lies -- The Chinese word "crisis" is composed of two characters: "danger" and "opportunity" -- You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term -- Market attractiveness, business attractiveness -- Only the paranoid survive -- To excel, tap into people's capacity to learn -- The future of business is selling less of more -- To be an optimist ... have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose -- Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable -- The strongest competitive forces determine the profitability of an industry -- If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete -- If you don't know where you are, a map won't help -- Chaos brings uneasiness, but it also allows for creativity and growth -- Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astonish the other -- There is no such thing as a minor lapse in integrity -- Make it easier to do the right thing and much harder to do the wrong thing -- Successful selling: Marketing management. Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department -- Know the customer so well that the product fits them and sells itself -- Attention, Interest, Desire, Action -- Marketing myopia -- The cash cow is the beating heart of the organization -- Expanding away from your core has risks; diversification doubles them -- If you're different, you will stand out -- There is only one boss: the customer -- Whitewashing, but with a green brush -- People want companies to believe in something beyond maximizing profits -- Everybody likes something extra for nothing -- In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to -- Make your thinking as funny as possible -- E-commerce is becoming mobile commerce -- Trying to predict the future is like driving with no lights looking out of the back window -- Product, place, price, promotion -- Delivering the goods: Production and postproduction. See how much, not how little, you can give for a dollar -- Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced -- If the pie's not big enough, make a bigger pie -- Eliminate unnecessary steps -- Every gain through the elimination of waste is gold in the mine -- Machines, facilities, and people should work together to add value -- Learning and innovation go hand in hand -- Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning -- Technology is the great growling engine of change -- Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a highway -- Put the product into the customer's hands -- it will speak for itself -- The desire to own something a little better, a little sooner than necessary -- Time is money -- A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder -- Taking the best from the best.