Blythe Masters Quotes

Where we have the choice between putting a dollar against those that are going to advance horizontal integration and those that are going to sustain current capability, we'd rather put them against the horizontal integration activity.

But, on balance, we seized the marketplace. We've got a great infrastructure. And yes it's struggling in some areas because of some external factors and some internal factors.

For a startup, you need to stay small so the others don't attack, or you aim to be one of the big guys. If you don't do it right, you might lose everything.

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

Just as predatory animals follow a similar general design and behave in similar ways, so organizations, especially those in competition with one another, must follow certain design principles if they are to succeed and prevail.

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.

What played to what had been a relative weakness for us-this was exploding overseas as well, and we had to scramble to mount some reach and get into places and be competitive on the ground.

Sometimes, for businesses, competition can be inconvenient, because competition means that the race is never over, the game is never won. No matter how well you were doing in the past, there's always someone who are out there wanting to take your place. So the temptation to avoid competition is powerful. It's rooted in motives as old as Adam and Eve: in greed for yet more money, in fear of losing your position in the market and all the benefits it brings.

Technology companies tend to operate in winner-take-all spaces and thus adopt a very high-commitment culture.

In a market where funding is hard to come by, if you're scaled already, then you are in a brilliant position because nobody is going to catch up with you.

Exceptional firms have always been good at aligning their mission or purpose with their execution and, as a result, have enjoyed category leadership in sales and profits.

The two most fundamental strategic choices are deciding where to play and how to win.

Building a business and becoming a billionaire is it's not championship. It's the competence; the competence in your sector with other companies not looking to have some kind of records in this issue.

Operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential to superior performance.

In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable 'moats'.

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.

Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.

The reality is that we've seen the last of any serious price wars for a long time. I don't think any of the others could afford it, certainly not on a long-term basis.

I wanted the best for my company, I had to do what I did to succeed. Everyone was lowering their prices to beat there competition so I did the same I eventually beat my competition.

Our economic competitors ... are eating us for lunch, and we can get in the game or not. We can be at the table, or we can be on the table.

If competitors don't like our two to one advantage, dominating market share with both SP and DS, well, I've got bad news. Because we just made it two and a half to one.

The fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage.

In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and or minimizing one or a few variables - like the discount warehouses of Costco.

One thing I always think about in making a market, and it again is something I have learned from Sam [Palmisano] as well, he always says, "Be first and be lonely."

Here's a good rule of thumb: don't worry about a competitor at all, until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product.