Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard decided to first start a company and then figure out what they would make. They just started moving forward, trying anything that might get them out of the garage and pay the light bills.

The bowling foul-line indicator didn’t become a market revolution. The automatic urinal flushers and fat-reduction shock machines didn’t go anywhere, either. In fact, the company stumbled along for nearly a yar before it got its first big sale - eight audio oscilloscopes to Walt Disney for work on the movie Fantasia. Even then, HP continued its unfocused ways, sputtering and tinkering with a variety of products, until it got a boost from war contracts in the early 1940s.

I have concentrated all along on building the finest retailing company that we possibly could. Period. Creating a huge personal fortune was never particularly a goal of mine. - Sam Walton

But wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.”

Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight than knows not victory, nor defeat.

Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them toward a certain goal.

Sony not only wanted to be successful in its own right, but to become the company best known for changing the image of Japanese consumer products as being poor quality.

The hubris factor. Taunting the gods.

A company is known by the men it keeps.

If you put fences around people, you get sheep.

  • What is the true meaning of the black belt?
  • The black belt represents the beginning — the start of a never-ending journey of discipline, work, and the pursuit of an ever-higher standard
  • Yes. You are now ready to receive the black belt and begin your work

If a product isn’t good enough to make an excellent gross margin in the first year, then it’s not a product with a significant technical advantage and the HP Company shouldn’t be making it, period.

We recognized very early that it was important to have your first line managers indoctrinated or oriented toward the philosophy because they’re the company to most people.