Peter Drucker Quotes

Startups need to focus on building a foundation for their company culture early, and then they need to revisit it often. Every time a hire is made, a feature is launched, a Facebook status is updated, a press interview is given, a round of financing is raised, or a meeting is held, culture should be part of the decision-making process.

Companies, like people, don't much like to change.

Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have.

By definition, startups are not constrained by the limits of established company culture. And so they push boundaries and develop new technologies and ways of doing things.

Entrepreneurs have a great ability to create change, be flexible, build companies and cultivate the kind of work environment in which they want to work.

Startups, in some sense, have gotten so easy to start that we are confusing two things. And what we are confusing, often, is, 'How far can you get in your first day of travel?' with, 'How long it is going to take to get up to the top of the mountain?'

When you have turnover, somebody not work out, they'd leave, it really affects a young organization because you don't have your process down pat. You got people coming and going who are affecting your direction. It's just really hard to start from scratch and quickly put your direction in place and be able to stick to it.

Growth does not always lead a business to build on success. All too often it converts a highly successful business into a mediocre large business.

To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.

There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful.

Having a company that's successful is a wonderful platform to do new things. You don't have to raise money for it; you can take profits from the company and pump them into new business.

We were hoping to build a small profitable company; and of course, what we've done is build a large, unprofitable company.

In general, the questions that are on our mind are the same questions that have been driving our work over the past decade. How do we bring order to this messy, unpredictable world of innovation? How can we dramatically improve the chances of creating a successful new-growth business? How can we do this again and again? More specifically, it has become very clear that the fundamental paradigms of market segmentation and branding are badly broken - and we're working on developing more useful theories for these dimensions of innovation.

I think maybe 50 years ago people and businesses felt like they had to choose between maximizing profits and making customers happy or making employees happy, and I think we're actually living in a special time where everyone's hyperconnected, whether through Twitter or blogs and so on. Information travels so quickly that it's actually possible to have it all, to make customers happy through customer service, to make employees happy through strong company cultures, and have that actually drive growth and profits.

Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company it will be invincible.

Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can;but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.

When companies get bigger they try to replicate their success. But they assume their magic came from process. They try to use processes to substitute content.

I don't understand small businesses, only big ones. Marriage is the hardest small business.

Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

I am not from the political or banking elite. I am a child of the middle class far from Paris. And if someone had told me that success is bad or if they had placed hurdles in my path, I wouldn't be where I am today. I want it to be possible for young people in our country to be successful - whether they want to find that success in the family, as an artist or by founding a company.

children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.

An entrepreneur's life is always a continuous journey.

The key to successful business is self belief and application.

I don't want to be labeled as one thing or another. In the past I've had successful relationships with men, and now I'm in this successful relationship with a woman. When it comes to love I am totally open. And I don't want to be put into a category, as in "I'm this" or "I'm that."

Every organization, no matter who it is, just follow the money.