Michael Eisner Quotes

If you're running an engineering or finance company, all companies depend on ideas and ingenuity. I think the principles of creative leadership apply everywhere, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're running a hospital.

I think of myself more as a designer than a serial entrepreneur. As a designer, the easiest way to see that something happens is to start a company and then be the boss, and then people have to do what you say.

Entrepreneurship is not really building a product, it's not having an idea, it's not being in the right place at the right time. It's fundamentally company building.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.

Thinking big is only one part of being a successful entrepreneur.

A subset of CEOs is that of entrepreneurs. And the classical definition of an entrepreneur is an individual who pursues opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled. That sounds like a very different person than one might expect an analytical investment manager to be.

Most people who go into business for themselves and, therefore, believe they are entrepreneurs, are doomed to struggle because they don't have a true Entrepreneurial Perspective. They have a Technician's Perspective.

Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.

I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There's vision, patience, and execution.

Successful entrepreneurship is ultimately a matter of flair. But there is also a fund of practical knowledge to be acquired and, of course, the right legal and financial framework has to be provided for productive enterprise to develop.

I built a phenomenal company; if we could run America the way I ran my company, we'd be proud of it.

Building a business is not rocket science, it's about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.

He that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures.

I would've liked to have been a better businessman when I was younger. And of course, I couldn't, because it wasn't part of my atmosphere. I never lived with accountants, I never lived with lawyers.

If you think in terms of topping, you're in the wrong business. You can't think that way.

I call the age we are entering the creative age because the key factor propelling us forward is the rise of creativity as the primary mover of our economy.

If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth - and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.

You've got to run your career. What happens is a lot of times artists have this talent and they're just looking for somebody to take it and do something with it. And you have to be the creative force.

If we start deciding, based on guesses or emotions, whether we will or won't participate in a business where we should have some long run edge, we're in trouble.

Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".

Ideas are somewhat like babies - they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work

I think somehow people should be encouraged to think about a very long time horizon and I think this is true for businesses, it's true for governments and it's true for people doing things in the non-profit sector.

Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once.