Robert Reich Quotes

There's always something happening in the world that creates an opportunity to try to fix a business and build a business.

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.

... 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

In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents - those constantly striving for betterment - have any hope of surviving.

Consulting offered me an opportunity to see a lot of different businesses in different regions of the world, to see how textiles were being affected by foreign competition, how technology was changing.

Competition is one click away. Innovation happens everywhere... you better have a culture asking for a voice.

In a world of global competition and new technology, I think competition is coming from new places.

I think we operate in a very dynamic marketplace, and as such, we need to constantly innovate.

Look at the computer industry. I've watched a lot of companies come and go, some that were right at the pinnacle of their success.

Whether in services or in manufacturing, the trick is to stay ahead of the curve. I believe we should not wait to be disrupted - we should become disruptors ourselves.

We win because we hire the smartest people. We improve our products based on feedback, until they're the best. We have retreats each year where we think about where the world is heading.

Doing business is all about providing a good product or service to your customers. A good businessman is he who knows that what is successful today may not be so tomorrow. Technology changes so fast, and so do people's needs and wants. That's why it would do well for a businessman to know how to adapt to change. He must constantly reinvent the business, or it won't last.

Competition can never be eliminated from this industry. There is nothing wrong with it. It keeps you on your toes, making you work harder.

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.

People who look at Apple's success and think we look at it as, 'Okay, great, we're done,' don't appreciate what's really going on here.

The real competitive advantage will come to countries and companies who differentiate their offerings through education, innovation, and productivity.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

The Chinese are quite entrepreneurial. Remember when Lenovo bought IBM's PC division. It was said that China didn't need a brand name, China didn't need to buy Lenovo to get into the PC business, I remember reading a one-liner somewhere which struck me as quite possibly true, it said the one thing that the Chinese had not been able to copy or figure out was the way, in terms of systems, that Americans - it probably would be true for Europeans as well - that Americans install and live by their management systems, while China is still quite half-assed. Perhaps that is a true statement.

In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

When Colin Powell showed up as Secretary of State in 2001, most State Department employees still didn't even have computers on their desks. When I got there they were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices. I mean, so you're thinking how do we operate in this new environment dominated by technology, globalizing forces? We have to change, and I can't expect people to change if I don't try to model it and lead it.

There is the opportunity to do more and better if you're smaller and more nimble.

Our behavior is driven by a fundamental core belief: the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere; and to rapidly convert this learning into action is its ultimate competitive advantage.

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.

We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process... We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing.

In this new, hyper competitive age, none of us, none of us can afford to be complacent.