Eric Ries Quotes

All things can be done by every company in the world. Apple builds a phone, and so does Samsung. It's not about being different but about being better at what you do.

If you can’t out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you’re toast anyway.

When we look at investing, we always think about 'how defensible is this, how likely is it that somebody is going to copy this.' E-commerce tends to be something easy to copy because it's execution.

The reality is, is that we love competition, at Apple. We think it makes us all better. But we want people to invent their own stuff.

Patents have not been a positive force in stimulating innovation at Cisco. Competition has been the motivator; bringing new products to market in a timely manner is critical. Everything we have done to create new products would have been done even if we could not obtain patents

People are going to copy your product if you build great stuff. Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't make it Google.

Often, I'm sitting opposite a client, and I'm thinking, 'How do I convince him to not copy the best-selling product out there?' And sometimes I don't know. Really, it's smarter to be a thief.

I enjoy looking at other people's products and learning from them. We take all of our competitors very seriously, as you know. You have to respect Intel. But we have our own tricks up our sleeves.

America demands invention and innovation to succeed.

The PC is successful because we're all benefiting from the competition with each other. If Twitter comes along, our games benefit. If Nvidia makes better graphics technology, all the games are going to shine. If we come out with a better game, people are going to buy more PCs.

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.

Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.

In the technology world, you have to execute fast or you're out of business.

I'd rather Apple cannibalize Apple than somebody else cannibalize Apple.

It's very difficult in the technology space when you have been leapfrogged to prosper again.

If you have a business idea that's extremely easy to copy, that can often become something of a challenge or problem.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.

The most successful company in Silicon Valley is Apple, and they're the most secretive.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It's the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.

There's an ongoing competition by global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes. The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find out new businesses that Samsung's future will hinge on.

Whatever you're selling, storage or networking or security, you're going head to head with the incumbent players.

Whatever business you're in - it doesn't matter - it's going to commoditize over time. It's going to devalue. You've got to keep moving it to a higher value.

... whatever business you're in, it doesn't matter, it's going to commoditize over time, it's going to devalue, you've got to keep moving it to a higher value. Keep going to a higher value in whatever it is that you do and force yourself and force the organization to always do it ahead of time

He who puts ... a product upon the market as it demands, controls that market, regardless of color. It is simply a survival of the fittest.