James C. Collins Quotes

I've really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed. I had to be a student of failure and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it's still something I do.

You learn a lot about vital corporations through non-vital corporations.

I've often felt there might be more to be gained by studying business failures than business successes.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

The key is not to figure out what the best people are doing and try to emulate it - rather, figure out what causes people and companies to be successful.

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

When you look at a company that's already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn't necessarily when it's executing well. It tends to be peacetime - you've defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple.

As a small business owner, you may not have the luxury to throw good money after bad, but if you can ascertain the 'why' of the failure, you can draw some significance from it and then turn it into something that clients will buy.

In business, when you fail at something, when something doesn't work, you say okay, we've learned that that's not a path to go down.

You can learn more from the lows than the highs. The highs are great but the lows make you really look at things in a different way and want to improve. Every player will have both in their careers and I have, but what you get is that experience which is so important to perform at your best.

Some other people are very lucky and always get in to the very best teams at the very best times and therefore go out and score lots of championship points and be in with a chance of the championship.

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

Because publishing is becoming more business-oriented each day with more examination of the bottom line, it's harder to break out than ever.

In my opinion MS is a lot better at making money than it is at making good operating systems.

I brought one big question with me to Harvard. Why do smart companies fail?

The wireless segment is approximately 50 percent of our business... we believe this is an industry-wide phenomenon and that we are, in fact, maintaining if not gaining market share.

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

I have had some great successes and great failures. I think every entrepreneur has. I try to learn from all of them.

Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they've succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.

Very few companies can perform at scale over the course of decades, and Yahoo has done that.

For value investors, General Motors is a tempting target. The company's share of the North American auto market has steadily declined for two decades, and analysts say the company suffers from weak management and unexciting cars.

There's a pure and simple business case for diversity: Companies that are more diverse are more successful.

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose. Life is a learning process and you have to try to learn what's best for you. Let me tell you, life is not fun when you're banging your head against a brick wall all the time.

In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option. We need to change this attitude toward failure - and celebrate the idea that only by falling on our collective business faces do we learn enough to succeed down the road.

The strength in our third-quarter financial results is cause for excitement. I'm particularly pleased that we continue to demonstrate impressive growth at the same time we are engaged in important merger discussions.