Leroy Hood Quotes

To be an entrepreneur in Europe, there is a stigma attached to it. There's a reason why England is known as a nation of shopkeepers. Part of it is the idea that it's better to have a shop and keep it up and running than close the doors and try to do something much more significant.

By the dawn of the millennium, the hallways at Microsoft were no longer home to barefoot programmers in Hawaiian shirts working through nights and weekends toward a common goal of excellence; instead, life behind the thick corporate walls had become staid and brutish.

I started my career at General Electric in a small office under a guy named Greg Liemandt, and his direct boss was Jack Welch. I would say those two have had the most profound impact on my career.

As a traditionally risk-averse nation, India has rarely been at the forefront of innovation. Indian companies have mostly imitated others and became very good at it.

It's not unusual for a would-be entrepreneur to get turned down half a dozen times before finding a willing investor - yet in most companies, it takes only one 'nyet' to kill a project stone dead.

We're supposed to be an entrepreneurial company; we're meant to be expanding and looking for opportunities - but the minute you do it, you get your head bashed in.

When you are led by values, it doesn't cost your business, it helps your business.

The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today, is that everything is thought of in quarters.

A big company is like trying to steer a luxury liner.

Chick-fil-A is what it is today because of its people, purpose and product.

As anyone who has covered the company for any length of time knows, Yahoo's record on major decision-making has been akin to a hippie commune - a lot of wrangling internally in a culture where everyone seems to have a voice and a reticence to push the button to launch.

I think you're defined as a company by what you choose to do and what you choose not to do.

I recognize that virtually every company that comes in here has a perspective. It's often not difficult to understand why they have the perspective that they have.

Companies have to be innovative in leading with values the same way they have to be innovative in their products and services.

I find myself using the word 'executives' now.

When the finance or marketing people run a company, innovation stops.

Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of operations, has been called 'Tim Cook's Tim Cook' by some.

One of the things Goldman teaches you is, don't be the first guy through the door because you're going to get all the arrows.

As an entrepreneur, you can have an instinct, and your instinct is right, but your idea you're substantiating that into is wrong, and the world is not ready for it.

I was one of the early folks at eBay, and by 1999, it was completely overrun by consultants from McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. It went from being a cool, fun startup to an MBA factory.

I am a person who does not subscribe to the hero-CEO school of thought.

I won't speak for the entertainment industry. I speak for Disney. I've seen people in the industry come to work every morning paranoid about what the other person or other company is doing. That means you're spending time and focus on somebody else's business instead of your own.

I've spent a lot of time studying corporations and what makes them tick.

Ultimately, what any company does when it is successful is merely a lagging indicator of its existing culture.

In large companies, the CEO is very distant from operations.