George Packer Quotes

Putin's recent penchant for high stakes wagers may prove even harder for Western leaders to handle than a policy of consistent expansionism, A rational imperialist can be contained, but the appropriate response to a gambler who makes snap decisions based on short term factors is less clear.

Any of our businesses will not exist in the form that is today, will not exist in the same form one year later, two years later... We have to worry about the disruptions in the business models and the practices.

The stock market clearly values companies that can deliver disruptive innovation.

Without competition, Silicon Valley will stop taking risks and will stop innovating.

You can't replicate Seamless or OpenTable for another industry.

A well-written character is one where you don't know in which direction it's going; the character could spring a surprise any moment.

With Facebook's IPO, the world learned a new way of organizing businesses around one overriding imperative: to ship new products quickly.

I'm always trying to improve, and you can't ever expect anything from me. You can always just expect me to be dangerous.

In a field like acting, there is pressure of all kinds, and it becomes tricky to navigate this space. There isn't a particular path laid out to get what you want; you have to figure out ways to get there on your own. And yet, there is no guarantee of getting what you want. At times, you don't know whom to listen to or whose advice to follow.

Whether by design or circumstance, every startup will eventually get disrupted.

I think to truly not know what to expect out of the story - to create a world where nothing is guaranteed - is sort of the backbone of 'Atlanta.'

I always have a motto: if it's going in-and-out one night, then the next opponent should be worried.

There are many people who think we had the first-mover advantage. But actually, when Uber came to India, Ola was doing only 2,000 rides per day. We had less than half a million dollars of funding.

If the first entrant always wins the market, the Dreamcast must have won the race against the PS2, for example. There are many precedents like that in the past. The first to market is not necessarily the winner in the race.

The story of Airbnb is really the underdog story in many ways.

Being a solo founder allows you to move quickly - when you're going up against massive, entrenched competitors, you need to maximize speed and agility. Having just one person at the top allows for faster decision making.

To the extent that anyone anywhere does anything interesting, the question is: 'Why isn't Apple doing that; why is Apple behind in that?' We aren't the Everything Company. We take on a very small number of things that we do very well, and we find that pretty rewarding.

I don't think LVMH will want to significantly change the strategy of Loro Piana, and I don't think that they would have bought it otherwise.

Technology companies tend to operate in winner-take-all spaces and thus adopt a very high-commitment culture.

That's why the tactics are so hard against Kyrgios because no one knows what he is going to do.

I don't know how this industry works. There is no formula.

TalkTalk's culture is one of a start-up... new services, desire to innovate, move fast.

It's worth noting that everything - from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media - were pioneered by startups, not existing companies.

We continue to see acquisitions as an opportunity area for us. It's one of the tools that we use to grow.

When money, rather than innovation or value, is your competitive advantage, that's when things get boring and stagnant, and monopolies take root.