Jack Ma Quotes

Often, I'm sitting opposite a client, and I'm thinking, 'How do I convince him to not copy the best-selling product out there?' And sometimes I don't know. Really, it's smarter to be a thief.

A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.

When something works for you or another brand, ask yourself, 'Why?' Then don't copy it but think about what you can do that's unique to you and better.

In advertising, not to be different is virtual suicide.

People are going to copy your product if you build great stuff. Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't make it Google.

Well, you might as well imitate your own program because if you don't, someone else will.

In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal.

If you want to be around in 10 years you've got to do something to differentiate yourself from the pack.

If you have a business idea that's extremely easy to copy, that can often become something of a challenge or problem.

You don't want to just do 'me too' companies that are copying what others are doing.

You can't put yourself into competition with a magazine like 'Vogue.' You have to create something new, something different.

Don't be the best. Be the only.

Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal.

You got to be able to reinvent yourself and come up with new ideas because everybody is going to try to copy, which is what you want. You want people to start saying what you say.

If everyone thinks you have a good idea, you´re too late

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

I don't think anybody came into the movie business to be unoriginal and plagiarising and not having an original idea in their brain.

We call ourselves creators and we just copy.

You have to be ahead of your game, and in industry that is a different condition than in art. If you make things in an intelligent way and then they are replicated, that's a beautiful thing. If you make things in a bad way and they are replicated, the wrong is multiplied.

The most essential thing for us was to get the business model right, then put the world-class technology under it to support it. At Merrill, that meant not doing what people expected.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

We can learn from IBM's successful history that you don't have to have the best product to become number one. You don't even have to have a good product.

You don't just become number one because you sing like everybody else. There is something different you bring to the table. Make sure you are constantly getting into the newest technologies. Learn the history of what you do, and always respect the ones who came before you.

If all you're trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it's unlikely that you'll be very successful.

Now if you go exactly where your competitors are, you're dead.