Larry Ellison Quotes

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

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.

Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane.

One of the ways that Microsoft beat Apple way back in the day was that they were a lot more open; today, in the world I come from, the free software and open-source world, Microsoft is not generally viewed as open; they're viewed as proprietary.

We fully expect our competitors to join us in embracing open standards with their next redesigns.

Except in very narrow cases, where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you're toast anyway.

If you don't have the best product, you're not going to make it in open-source.

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.

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.

... 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

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

I don't invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

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.

It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.

Competition is overrated. In practice it is quite destructive and should be avoided wherever possible. Much better than fighting for scraps in existing markets is to create and own new ones.

To gain the competitive edge, companies must master the ability to innovate.

I live by the business model that there is a better than, a less than, or a different than. Those are the three categories. I chose to be different than. The one that's different than will stand out with the proper work ethic.

Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer, I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.

You want an idea that turns into a monopoly. But you can't get a monopoly, in a big market right away; too much competition for that.

You either disrupt your own company or someone else will.

What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or the wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business.

Any business that does not innovate will fail over time.

Companies that solely focus on competition will ultimately die. Those that focus on value creation will thrive.

Competition should not be for a share of the market-but to expand the market.