Core Competency Quotes

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

That's the great thing about Apple: it's very focused on the things that we know how to do very well and not try to extend ourselves to areas that we know very little about or don't have a lot of expertise in.

By simply capitalizing on core strengths and knowledge, companies and entrepreneurs can engage in an emerging business model that will enable them to create - and demonstrate - real, sustainable social impact in society.

One of the real core competencies of Blackwater, or companies like Blackwater, is we can operate in difficult places without any outside support.

Concentrate on doing what you do best, and let others do the rest.

Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced.

Working on a weakness within a strength zone will always produce positive results. Working on a weakness outside of the strength zone will not.

I never had a backup plan. I've only been good at one thing. I admire people who are jacks-of-all-trades. That's not me.

Ideas aren't a sideshow that make our factory a little more valuable. Our factory is a sideshow that makes our ideas a little more valuable!

Great companies are defined by their discipline and their understanding of who they are and who they are not.

My basic strategy is to stick to my core business and to my area of expertise.

The unique value that Microsoft can add is around productivity and platforms. Productivity is broadly something we can uniquely do.

I believe that you should do what you know how to do best.

If I have any insight at all to contribute it is this: find out what you are really good at and stick to it.

You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.

Apple Computer would not have reached its current peak of success if it had feared to roll the dice and launch products that didn't always hit the mark. In the mid-1990s, the company was considered washed up, Steve Jobs had departed, and a string of lackluster product launches unrelated to the company's core business.

We need business leaders who have a respect for technical issues even if they don't have technical backgrounds. In a lot of U.S. industries, including cars and even computers, many managers don't think of technology as a core competency, and this attitude leads them to farm out technical issues.

Do what you do best, and link to the rest

Apple does magical things, but it does magical things that are a combination of a product, a service, a system, and an experience with no compromised standards. But you don't see Apple off trying to replicate Facebook, and I think it would be surprising to me if Apple went off and said, 'We're going to replicate a Facebook just for health care.'

When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can't, and if we can't own the key technologies, we don't do it.

Technical understanding should be a core competency of any company.

Well-trained and dedicated employees are the only sustainable source of competitive strength.

I've always focused on technology and growth and don't have the core competency to do liability management - I'm a mechanical engineer.

We're focused on doing one thing incredibly well. If you look at other companies, all of these companies are doing a lot of different things but we're still, as we grow, doing exactly one thing.

At the end of the day, I know what my bread and butter is and how I can be effective.