Quotes from William H. Davidow

The genius of American business lies in risk-taking, creativity, invention, and ambition.

There's no great future in being the leading supplier to a dying industry.

The value of most high-tech products is determined by the cost of alternative solutions to the customer.

But sometimes there is no alternative approach. Then, pricing is a matter of placing a value on the solution to a particular customer problem. That value has nothing to do with the cost of building the product.

the market prices of quasi-commodities are not related to the costs in their own manufacturing area, but to the cost structure of the lower-cost competitors and their willingness to operate at certain margin levels.

Many companies enter businesses planning to capture only a small percentage of the market. Such plans are not conservative; they are extremely dangerous. They are strategies for failure. The only good plans and the only good marketing programs are those aimed at dominance, backed by sufficient resources to achieve it, and executed with precision.

But for high-tech products (and many others) promotions can't change reality.

Marketing people know the corporate position so well that they automatically develop pricing strategies compatible with it rather than with market needs.

As stated before, I am always tempted to tell marketing people that "I would rather be different than better," knowing full well that if a product is truly different in some ways important to some customers, they will automatically perceive the product as better. Being different and offering customers features and services they cannot get anywhere else is one of the most important things a company can do.

Marketing's job is to design intangibles into the product and then to use them to make products unique.

Positioning is a psychological location in the consumer's mind, pertaining to the relative qualities a company, product, or service may have with respect to its competition.

Most of the mainframe computer companies never successfully made the transition to minicomputers, and most mini-computer companies missed out on PCs.

Time is the deadly enemy of the technology business. Today's great idea is tomorrow's obsolete concept. The longer it takes a company to get its product to the market, the greater the likelihood a competitor will be there first. Big plans with extended schedules are a risk in any business,