Steve Blank Quotes

Execution without a long term strategy leads nowhere. Likewise a long term strategy without execution leads nowhere.

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.

In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination.

There are three ways that men get what they want: by planning, by working, and by praying.

Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.

Just like a script, you need to keep a business plan to yourself.

Success doesn't necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won't win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling.

The most essential thing for us was to get the business model right, then put the world-class technology under it to support it. At Merrill, that meant not doing what people expected.

I'm very much a creative person, but you've got to do the follow-through. A lot of people start out with an exciting thing and they want to take over the world, but really the people who do take over the world have a good plan of how to get there and the steps along the way.

A plan is always successful if the plan is good.

My business is to prevent the future.

The thing that I learned early on is you really need to set goals in your life, both short-term and long-term, just like you do in business. Having that long-term goal will enable you to have a plan on how to achieve it.

If football taught me anything about business, it is that you win the game one play at a time.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.

I felt a sense of fulfillment that an action plan, which I'd laid on the table on the 2nd of February 1990, had been fulfilled, had been properly implemented within the time frame which I envisaged.

Incentives are not strategy, they are tactics. Defensive measures.

People need patience. It takes time to build a brand.

I've been good at product entrepreneuring.

Sound strategy starts with having the right goal.

You make a product, and you put it out, and you do it with as much excellence and also wisdom as possible, and then it's the Lord that drives it and determines where it will go.

As long as we continue to execute, everything will work out for everybody at GoPro.

Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.