At the end of the day, what makes Silicon Valley work is technology and the outcome of making money. Those two things have to be healthy. It has to matter a lot more than who is the celebrity and who is famous and who goes to the best parties.
Diverse perspectives lead to a better outcome. There's so much data, when you look at the math, in terms of the investor returns and the shareholder value that gets created from more diverse boards.
Profit is not a cause but a result-
The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain.
A well-managed business will have a high return on invested capital. But that's a consequence. It's not a way to manage a business.
A business, successful or not, is merely a reflection of the character of its leadership.
Having some retail experience is key. It really is where the battle is won or lost.
But in the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs.
Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Chances are that neither the client nor the agency will ever know very much about what role the ad has played in sales or profits of the client, either short-term or long-term.
Businesses are made by people. We've proven time and time again that you can have wonderful shop, and put a bloke in there who's no good, and he'll stuff it up. Put a good bloke in, and it just turns around like that .
Money is just a consequence. I always say to my team, 'Don't worry too much about profitability. If you do your job well, the profitability will come.'
Money coming in says I've made the right marketing decisions.
A very good leader is someone who has a great team, it's all about the team. You only have 12 hours or 14 hours a day, if the people that are with you are doing a great job, you can have a great business. If not, it's not going to work.
If you look at all the investments made during 'Dragons' Den,' the ratio of those that make it to those that don't is actually extremely high.
The truth is that you can't really tell how anybody's doing in the tech business for at least five or 10 years.
I think the company's [HP's] success will be my legacy. The company's failure will be my failure, with all the predictable consequences of that.
It is customers that decide if we succeed.
Great design alone isn't going to yield the results investors are expecting.
History suggests that big corporate maneuvers tend to coincide with changes in morning-TV fortunes, either because the new managers tinker with the product or fail to take it seriously.
You find that you can have the best business in the most exciting industry, but if the execution, if the torch-holder, if the value-creator isn't there, then we don't make it happen.
