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Strategy

1. Reengineering: The principle slogan of the Nineties, used to describe any and all corporate strategies.

Anonymous. Fortune (February 15, 1995)

 

2. Vision: Top management’s heroic guess about the future, easily printed on mugs, T-shirts, posters and calendar cards.

Anonymous. Fortune (February 15, 1995)

 

3. You shouldn’t mix up the long-term business opportunities with the occasional shoot-out. These things will happen.

Percy Barnevik (b.1941) Swedish former C.E.O. of ABB. Fortune (November 1993)

 

4. You can be very bold as a Theoretician. Good theories are like good art. A practitioner has to compromise.

Warren Bennis (b.1925) U.S. educator and writer. The Director (October 1988)

 

5. Grand business plans are all very well, but nothing beats dipping your toe in the water.

Karan Bilimoria (b.1962) Indian entrepreneur and founder of Cobra. Sunday Times (London) (October 2000)

 

6. At Berkshire, our carefully-crafted acquisition strategy is simply to wait for the phone to ring. Happily, it sometimes does so, usually because a manager who sold to us earlier has recommended to a friend that he think about following suit.

Warren Buffett (b.1930) U.S. entrepreneur and financier. Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders, Berkshire Hathaway 1999 Annual Report (March 1, 2000)

 

7. To keep such adaptability while still keeping the initiative, the best way is to operate along a line which offers alternative objectives.

Karl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) Prussian general and military strategist. On War (1831)

 

8. I believe that you have to understand the economics of a business before you have a strategy, and you have to understand your strategy before you  have a structure. If you get these in the wrong order, you will probably fail.

Michael Dell (b.1965) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of Dell Computer Corporation. Speech to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Technology Conference, Dallas. “Maximum Speed: Lessons Learned from Managing Hypergrowth” (September 10, 1998)

 

9. Swing for hits, not home runs.

Michael Dell (b.1965) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of Dell Computer Corporation. Direct from Dell (1996)

 

10. Winning races give you a great deal of satisfaction from playing a part in the strategy.

Ron Dennis (b.1949) British entrepreneur and Formula 1 motor racing team owner. Referring to the teamwork in preparation for Formula 1 motor racing. Quoted in The Adventure Capitalists (Jeff Grout and Lynne Curry; 1998)

 

11. Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the future of present decisions.

Peter F. Drucker (b.1909) U.S. management consultant and academic. Managing in Turbulent Times (1980)

 

12. Our mission tritely is to change the world.

Donna Dubinsky (b.1955) U.S. IT executive. Forbes (October 2000)

 

13. BA wants to be big in Europe. It is after all our own backyard.

Rod Eddington (b.1950) Australian business executive and C.E.O. of British Airways. Marketing (May 2000)

 

 

14. Strategy must attract, win and retain end-customers and distribution channel members, as well as suppliers or vendors.

Liam Fahey (b.1951) British writer and consultant. Competitors (1999)

 

15. My aim in management has always been to lay foundations that will make a club successful for years or even decades.

Alex Ferguson (b.1941) Scottish soccer player and coach. Managing My Life (1999)

 

16. We’re still trying to put the brakes on a freight train. We’ve got to stop it before we can turn it round.

William Clay Ford, JR. (b.1957) U.S. business executive. Interview, Fortune (November 2002)

 

17. A large part of my mantra is about getting there before somebody takes it away from you.

Lynn Forrester (b.1955) U.S. business executive. Sunday Times (London) (June 2000)

 

18. You have to understand what clients are thinking, what the consensus is and when to go against the consensus.

Elaine Garzarelli (b.1951) U.S. C.E.O. and president of Garzarelli Investment Management. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)

 

19. I haven’t spent any time setting goals. I’m spending my time trying to understand our competitive position and how we’re serving customers.

Lou Gerstner (b.1942) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of IBM. Fortune (May 1993)

 

20. I buy when other people are selling.

  1. Paul Getty (1892-1976) U.S. entrepreneur, oil industry executive and financier. International Herald Tribune (1961)

 

21. The secret isn’t counting the beans, it’s growing more beans.

Roberto Goizueta (1931-97) U.S. C.E.O. of Coca-Cola. Fortune (November 1995)

 

22. The role of takeovers is to improve unsatisfactory companies and to allow healthy companies to grow strategically by acquisitions.

James Goldsmith (1933-97) British entrepreneur, financier and politician. Quoted in International Herald Tribune (November 16, 1989)

 

23. Columbus didn’t have a business plan when he discovered America.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. New Yorker (April 1994)

 

24 .A question that often comes up at times of strategic transformation is, should you pursue a highly focused approach, betting everything on one strategic goal, or should you hedge?…Mark Twain hit it on the head when he said, “Put all of your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET.”

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company and Career (1996), ch. 8

 

25. Without an appropriate vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing, incompatible and time-consuming projects that go in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.

Bob Guccione (b.1930) U.S. magazine publisher. Leading Change (1996)

 

26. whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to sink. The same goes for strategies. How many organizations carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is too late?

Gary Hamel (b.1954) U.S. academic, business writer and consultant. Lecture, “Pronking and Surviving in the Age of Gazelles” (October 26, 1999)

 

27. We like to believe we can break strategy down to Five Forces or Seven Ss. But you can’t. Strategy is extraordinary emotional and demanding.

Gary Hamel (b.1954) U.S. academic, business writer and consultant. Competing for the Future (co-written with C. K. Prahalad; 1994)

 

28. Creative strategies seldom emerge from the annual planning ritual. The starting point for next year’s strategy is almost always this year’s strategy…the company sticks to what it knows, even though the real opportunities may be elsewhere.

Gary Hamel (b.1954) U.S. academic, business writer and consultant. “Strategic Intent,” Harvard Business Review (co-written with C.K. Prahald; May-June 1989)

 

29. Brains are becoming the core of orgaanisations-other activities can be contracted out.

Charles Handy (b.1932) British business executive and author. Interview (February 1994)

 

30. Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.

Hesiod (fl. 800 B.C.) Greek poet. Works and Days (8th century B.C.)

 

31. Are we going to be a services power? The double cheeseburger or the mayo kings of the world.

Lee Iacocca (b.1924) U.S. president of Ford Motor Company, chairman and C.E.O. of Chrysler Corporation. Fortune (July 1986)

 

32. To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter (b. 1943) U.S. management theorist, academic and writer. Men and Women of the Corporation (1977)

 

33. The balanced scorecard is not a way of formalizing strategy. It’s a way of understanding and checking what you have to do throughout the organization to make your strategy work.

Robert Kaplan (b.1940) U.S. accounting educator. The “Balanced scorecard,” created by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, is a means of measuring performance in key areas. Financial Times (London) (April 1997)

 

34. There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.

Philip Kotler (b.1931) U.S. marketing management thinker. Interview, The Events & Awards Managers of Asia and Hamlin-Iturralde Corporation (1999)

 

35. What business are we in?

Theodore Levitt (b.1925) U.S. management theorist, writer and editor. Referring to the short-sighted view of U.S. companies. “Marketing Mopia,” Harvard Business Review (September-October 1975)

 

36. Differentiation is a distancing designed to reduce the price sensitivity of the offering.

Shiv S. Mathur (b.1927) British writer. Creating Value (co-written with Alfred Kenyon; 1997)

 

37. The task of business strategy is to make the business more valuable by a specific route: that of targeting profitable customers.

Shiv S. Mathur (b.1927) British writer. Creating Value (co-written with Alfred Kenyon; 1997)

 

38. If the system does the thinking, the thought must be detached from the action, strategy from operations and ostensible thinkers from doers.

Henry Mintzberg (b.1939) Canadian academic and management theorist. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)

 

39. Mold-breaking strategies grow initially like weeds, they are not cultivated like tomatoes a hothouse.

Henry Mintzberg (b.1939) Canadian academic and management theorist. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)

 

40. Strategy is not the consequence of planning but the opposite, its starting point.

Henry Mintzberg (b.1939) Canadian academic and management theorist. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)

 

41. Strategy making is an immensely complex process involving the most sophisticated. Subtle and at times subconscious of human cognitive and social processes.

Henry Mintzberg (b.1939) Canadian academic and management theorist. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (1994)

 

42. Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet ‘em on your way down.

Wilson Mizner (1876-1933) U.S. hotelier, screenwriter and wit. Quoted in The Legendary Mizners (Alva Johnston; 1953)

 

43. It’s much overstated that there has been some grand world plan for News Corporation. We have really been much more opportunistic than that.

Elisabeth Murdoch (b.1968) Australian movie and television executive. Referring to the management style of her father, Rupert Murdoch. Forbes (July 1998)

 

44. In business as on the battlefield, the object of strategy is to bring about the condition most favorable to one’s own side.

Kenichi Ohmae (b.1943) Japanese management consultant and theorist. The Mind of the Strategist (1982)

 

45. The strategist’s methods is very simply to challenge the prevailing assumptions with a single question: Why?

Kenichi Ohmae (b.1943) Japanese management consultant and theorist. The Mind of the Strategist (1982)

 

46. The essence of strategy is not the structure of a company’s products and markets, but the dynamics of its behavior.

Tom Peters (b.1942) U.S. management consultant and author. Liberation Management (1992)

 

47. Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of values.

Michael Porter (b.1947) U.S. strategist. Harvard Business Review (November-December 1996)

 

48. The most successful computer companies will be those that buy computers rather than build then. The strategic goal should be to create persistent value in computing from software.

Andy Rappaport, U.S. start-up expert and consultant. “The Computerless Computer Company.” Harvard Business Review (co-written with Shmuel Halevi; July/August 1991)

 

49. We try to picture what the products will be and then say, what technology should we be working on today to help us get there?

John Sculley (b.1939) U.S. partner of Sculley Brothers, former president of Pepsi, and C.E.O. of Apple Computers. Inc. magazine (1988)

 

50. The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.

George Soros (b.1930) U.S. financier, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Soros on Soros (1995)

 

51 .Successful companies move quickly in and out of products, markets and sometimes even entire businesses.

George Stalk (b.1951) U.S. author. “Competing on Capabilities,” Harvard Business Review (co-written with Philip Eras and Lawrence Shulman; March/April 1992)

 

52. The essence of a strategy is not the structure of a company’s products and markets, but the dynamics of its behavior.

George Stalk (b.1951) U.S. author. “Competing on Capabilities,” Harvard Business Review (co-written with Philip Eras and Lawrence Shulman; March/April 1992)

 

53. Starting companies is very hard and time-consuming. You want to keep those to a minimum.

Jay S. Walker, U.S. entrepreneur, founder of Priceline.com and C.E.O. of Walker Digital Corporation. Quoted in “Idea Man,” The Standard (Todd Woody; 1999)

 

54. Strategies that succeed are organic. They evolve. They wrap themselves around problems, challenges and opportunities, make progress and move on.

Robert H. Waterman, JR. (b.1936) U.S. consultant and author. The Frontiers of Excellence (1994)

 

55. By a progressive, I do not mean a man who is ready to move, but a man who knows where he is going when he moves.

Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) U.S. president. Speech (1919)

 

56. Our business is company creation.

Ann Winblad (b.1953) U.S. venture capitalist. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)