Gary Hamel Quotes

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.

Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators.

The important thing to remember, if you are trying something that is an innovation, is not to think too much about it. Because if you take too long, by the time you get there, the world will have changed. You take a risk, and if it doesn't work, you make a change. We are not betting our lives on it.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.

The key is to embrace disruption and change early. Don't react to it decades later. You can't fight innovation.

You can never plan the future by the past.

The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo.

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.

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.

I don't believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

Our only security is our ability to change.

For any new technology there is always controversy and there always some fear associated with it. I think that's just the price of being first sometimes.

Customers are willing to try new things, and if you can survive, you will have fewer competitors. It's like entering the eye of the storm. As long as you are strong enough to survive, you can end up in still water by yourself.

The challenge of the unknown future is so much more exciting than the stories of the accomplished past.

There's nothing efficient about innovation.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

Technology is like the ante in a poker game. It is the price you pay to play the game. But it doesn't mean you are going to win.

The move to modernity has its risks but the greater risk is not moving at all.

The Future Belongs to Those Who are Fast

You embrace disruption. I think it's a good thing.