Frans van Houten Quotes

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.

Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.

Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

I'm committed to structural changes.

Strauss Group continues to strengthen its future growth engines, improve the company's competitive position, and increase market share, while continuing streamlining processes, improvements, and carrying out organizational adjustments in the company.

I like modern efficiencies and functionality.

We are addressing duplication and complexity. At the same time, we are investing more in research and development, speeding up the time to market of new innovations, and expanding our sales force in markets where growth is to be found, like Turkey, Russia, the Mideast, China, and southeast Asia.

We're reviewing everything to see how we can do it better, faster, and more efficiently.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard.

The more you eliminate the inefficient use of information, the better it is for productivity.

Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it.

My view is that innovation has declined in the everyday processes that businesses tinker with incrementally as they try to become more productive over time.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

Whether you're a programmer or a seamstress, it's all about new techniques, simplifying old techniques, and consolidating steps. Making things go faster - but not worse.

I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature. For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration.

I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, 'You guys are doing too much stuff.' He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We'd like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.

Any of our businesses will not exist in the form that is today, will not exist in the same form one year later, two years later... We have to worry about the disruptions in the business models and the practices.

Culture change means we will do things differently.

Every business has to figure out how to make itself more efficient. They've got to use technology. They've got to use the Internet, things like that. We can do the same thing with our state colleges.

One of the ways I think you make more money is by creating more efficiency.

The top principle for disruptive and sustaining innovation is that it has to have a laser focus on customers. Innovation begins with their needs and expectations.

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform.

I think any time you increase focus, increase speed, all those are going to help any business.

It's all about competitiveness: are you making the products that people really do want and value, and are you making it more efficiently and using less resources and less time than the competition?