Max McKeown quotes:

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  • The founder of Dell found ways of delivering Hewlett Packard's most profitable products for much lower prices but forgot to deliver their quality so within a few years had fallen behind again. Ideas need constant renewal. A great idea will never be perfect and will never work perfectly in all markets and all seasons.

  • Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.

  • Strategy is about shaping the future.

  • Whenever a maker and a thinker get together, really cool stuff happens.

  • Who's more likely to succeed - someone with high skill and no ambition, or no skill and high ambition? If you're an entrepreneur, you can hire as many skilled people for your business as you want.

  • Change is not overcoming inertia as much as it is redirecting, guiding, tweaking what already is and what has already happened. We must believe that we can make choices and that those choices can alter the future.

  • How much time have you invested in thinking about strategy? How many options have you considered before the plan was written? How have you ensured that the thinking behind the plan is challenged? How much time do you spend exploring trends, possibilities and cool stuff? How much time is spent playing with ideas, hopes and dreams?

  • If you change the rules of the market, you can be more successful than your competitors.

  • Entrepreneurs don't believe the future is predictable - but they do believe that they can create the future themselves.

  • We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage...

  • The psychology of individual creativity is about at least three different things. First, creativity is about thinking differently. Second, creativity is about feeling differently. Third, creativity is about focusing, or committing, differently.

  • Change is inevitable, progress is not.

  • Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.

  • Entrepreneurs are like cats, because they are independent and do their own thing. Although organisations say they like cats, what they really want is sheep that they can herd.

  • There are immense numbers of potential entrepreneurs who can start their own businesses among the people who are working in large organisations.

  • The real heart of strategy is the strategist.

  • Innovation can start with wanting what does not yet exist - and finding a solution - or seeing what does not yet exist - and finding an opportunity.

  • As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas.

  • At the point that an idea approaches perfection, fashion and expectations surge ahead, leaving the innovator with considerable room to find further improvements.

  • Brilliant strategy is the best route to desirable ends with available means.

  • If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas.

  • With a clever strategy, each action is self-reinforcing. Each action creates more options that are mutually beneficial. Each victory is not just for today but for tomorrow.

  • A great strategy meeting is a meeting of minds.

  • Amazon thrived because it implemented the online bookstore idea better than any of its early rivals did, not because it was the only company to have the idea or the first company to have the idea. It continues to grow only because it keeps trying to improve on the details of the idea and the way it puts it into practise.

  • Before innovation - or practical creativity - there is insight. You must see the world differently.

  • All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

  • The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.

  • Problem-insight precedes solution insight. Someone has to recognise a problem before they start to solve the problem...

  • The smart strategist allows strategy to be shaped by events. Good reactions can make great strategy. Strategy involves competition of goals, and the risk is the difference between those goals and the ability of the organization to achieve them. So part of the risk is created by the strategy.

  • Becoming a strategic thinker is about opening your mind to possibilities. It's about seeing the bigger picture. It's about understanding the various parts of your business, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again in a more powerful way. It's about insight, invention, emotion and imagination focused on reshaping some part of the world.

  • Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

  • Dont be a life spectator.. take the plunge.

  • Following the rules of your industry will only get you so far.

  • Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You'll know that you're getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

  • Ideally, you will develop strategic response to your place in the corporate lifecycle to identify new paths of strategic renewal. You will look for new growth curves that can be started early enough to replace declining products and you will try to identify whole new curves that will take the organisation to new levels of growth as a whole.

  • Innovation is new stuff that is made useful.

  • Our need for innovation has shifted power closer to the source of that power-Us. We are the future.

  • Strategists who don't take time to think are just planners.

  • Strategy and culture should have breakfast together.

  • Strategy is not a solo sport, even if you're the CEO.

  • Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy.

  • The task of the strategist and leadership team is to reduce uncertainty in the areas that they can directly influence in order to pursue attractively difficult objectives.

  • What are you doing at the moment? How does that compare to your competitors? What do you want to achieve? How can you create something people want?

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