Business Strategy Quotes

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." "Vision, guts and enthusiasm. Three qualities I feel you always gotta have to have a shot at success." "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." "We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient." "We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details." "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last." "All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts... not analysis." "Friends congratulate me after a quarterly-earnings announcement and say, 'Good job, great quarter.' And I'll say, 'Thank you, but that quarter was baked three years ago.'" "We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent." "When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer." "I very frequently get the question, “What’s going to change in the next ten years?” And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question, “What’s not going to change in the next ten years?” And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two, because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time." "If you're watching your competitors, you're unlikely to invent a bunch of stuff on your own." "Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow." "Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there." "Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world. If you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it's so easy to sell your product to the world" "The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency." "Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other." "In this business, by the time you realize you're in trouble, it's too late to save yourself. Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone."