Michael Gerber Quotes

All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Breaking the rules and challenging convention is in the DNA of every successful entrepreneur. Doing things differently and solving problems with new, innovative and fresh approaches are the very reason many start-ups are able to compete and sometimes outpace the established market leaders.

I always follow the same idea: Start small and disrupt to create something big.

I've tended to work at fast-growing companies that improve the way business gets done.

In embracing change, entrepreneurs ensure social and economic stability.

To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.

I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?

Google worries - and rightly so - about how hard it is for a big company to come up with the next hot thing.

Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there - a project a week.

Remember: you cannot build a better mouse trap by fixing the old one - NewCo demands active ownership, and that activity is not the sum of doing multiple jobs but, instead, the sum of implementing paradigm-shifting changes that create new industries and solutions.

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.

You either innovate or you become defunct.

One of my philosophies of building companies is the importance of velocity.

Unless you stay focused on innovation, you can be disintermediated.

Industries that are chaotic are ripe for innovation. They are open to anyone who has an idea.

Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

U.S. companies are innovative and entrepreneurial.

Your innovation can create new winners and losers; or at the very least, make existing companies look fresh and innovative by partnering with you. Everyone wants to align with market makers.

Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Business. Capture Every Fleeting Idea And Drive For Change.

Innovation and creativity are the juiciest parts of running a business.

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things.

Life is like the monkey bars: you have to let go to move forward. Once you make the decision to leap into entrepreneurship, be sure to loosen your grasp on old concepts so you can swing your way to new ones.

Any company has got to reinvent itself again and again.