Quotes About Business

People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream-- to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living wage.

Porter's solution to this problem requires some courage: the only way to know if you are achieving the ultimate goal of creating economic value is to be brutally honest about the true profits you've earned and all the capital you've committed to the business. Strategy, then, must start not only with the right goal, but also with a commitment to measure performance accurately and honestly.

Just to keep our terminology straight, for Porter strategy always means "competitive strategy" within a business. The business unit, and not the company overall, is the core level of strategy. Corporate strategy refers to the business logic of a multiple-business company.

The Enterprise value proposition is based on a simple insight: renting a car meets different needs at different times. Hertz and its followers in the industry built their business around travelers, people away from home on business or on vacation. Enterprise recognized that a sizeable minority of rentals, roughly 40 to 45 percent, occur in the renter's home city. If your car is stolen, for example, or damaged in an accident, you'll need a rental.

Very early in his career, he went after the single biggest and most consequential question in business: Why are some companies more profitable than others? One big question led to another.

In the oft-told joke, one economist says to another, "Sure, it works in reality. But will it work in theory?" Porter's work endures—and is so widely cited and used—because it works in both realms, theory and practice.

I start with competition in Part 1 for the simple reason that if there were no competition, there would be no need for strategy. Competitive rivalry is a relentless process working against a company's ability to find and maintain an advantage.

The key to competitive success—for businesses and nonprofits alike—lies in an organization's ability to create unique value.

Your cost advantage might come from lower operating costs or from using capital more efficiently (including working capital), or both.

In business, multiple winners can thrive and coexist. Competition focuses more on meeting customer needs than on demolishing rivals. Just look around. Because there are so many needs to serve, there are many ways to win.

From the outside, business can look like "a seemingly mindless game of chance at which any donkey could win provided only that he be ruthless. But that is of course how any human activity looks to the outsider unless it can be shown to be purposeful, organized, systematic; that is unless it can be presented as the generalized knowledge of a discipline." —Peter F. Drucker

The five forces framework explains the industry's average prices and costs, and therefore the average industry profitability you are trying to beat.

value is ultimately defined by customers.

The real point of competition is not to beat your rivals. It's not about winning a sale. The point is to earn profits.

than from the product itself.

According to company legend, here's how Southwest Airlines was born. Back in the late 1960s, "a couple of guys said, 'Here's an idea. Why don't we start an airline that charges just a few bucks and has lots of flights every day instead of what the other guys are doing—charging a lot of bucks and having just a few flights each day?

Entry barriers protect an industry from newcomers who would add new capacity.

Blue Ocean Strategy

If rivalry is intense, companies compete away the value they create, passing it on

I told Lee people in the chocolate business can't take honeymoons until the last bunny's been sold.

Fuck. You." He smirked. "Later, sweetheart. Now try to keep your mind on business for me like a good girl.

I have several writer friends, but I don't involve them in my work process. I'm more likely to talk about the business of publishing with them.

I've been on jobs like that before, everyone stuck on the money not the work, watching their backs every minute. Bad for your health and your business. We'll do this civilised, or not at all. What do you say? "I say civilised," said Shenkt. "For pity's sake, let's kill like honest men.

keiretsu "enterprise groups."8