The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expert….

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories..

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things..

Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly..

An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill.

Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo..

The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money..

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole!.

The fact that a consistendy highly creative person is generally irresponsible in the sense that we have used this term is in part predictable from wh….

Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits..

Anything in excess is a poison..

Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day..

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the resp….

You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging.

What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work..

A product is not a product unless it sells. Otherwise it is merely a museum piece..

Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Oth….

Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation..

Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and….

Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things..

Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values….