Gary Hamel Quotes & Sayings

A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority. — Gary Hamel

Obviously, you don't have to be religious to be moral, and beastly people are sometimes religious. — Gary Hamel

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform. — Gary Hamel

Perseverance may be just as important as speed in the battle for the future. — Gary Hamel

From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top. — Gary Hamel

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount. — Gary Hamel

Power has long been regarded as morally corrosive, and we often suspect the intentions of those who seek it. — Gary Hamel

A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It's close to being functionally flawless - like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google's home page. — Gary Hamel

An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth. — Gary Hamel

The problem is not one of prediction. It is one of imagination. — Gary Hamel

I'm not one of those professors whose office is encased floor-to-ceiling with books. By the way, I think academics do this to intimidate their visitors. — Gary Hamel

The opportunities for future growth are everywhere. Seeing the future has nothing to do with speculating about what might happen. Rather, you must understand the revolutionary potential of what is already happening. — Gary Hamel

Online hierarchies are inherently dynamic. The moment someone stops adding value to the community, his influence starts to wane. — Gary Hamel

Most companies don't have the luxury of focusing exclusively on innovation. They have to innovate while stamping out zillions of widgets or processing billions of transactions. — Gary Hamel

At the pinnacle of great design are products so gorgeous and lust-worthy that you want to lick them: a Porsche 911, Samsung's Luxia TV, an Eames lounge chair or anything by Loro Piana. — Gary Hamel

I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms. — Gary Hamel

But all of these things now exist. (What? Hogwarts isn't real?) — Gary Hamel

To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous. — Gary Hamel

Innovation is the fuel for growth. When a company runs out of innovation, it runs out of growth. — Gary Hamel

To discover the future it is not necessary to be a seer, but it is absolutely vital to be unorthodox. — Gary Hamel

Alan Kay's famous aphorism is that perspective is worth 80 IQ points. An innovative insight is not the product of an individual's brilliance. It's not as if innovators' heads are wired in different ways. Innovation typically comes from looking at the world through a slightly different lens. — Gary Hamel

In an ideal world, an individual's institutional power would be correlated perfectly with his or her value-add. In practice, this is seldom the case. — Gary Hamel

The value of your network is the square of the number of people in it. — Gary Hamel

If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble. — Gary Hamel

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today. — Gary Hamel

Your organization can start tweeting, but that wont change its DNA. — Gary Hamel

People are all there is to an organization — Gary Hamel

We like to believe we can break strategy down to Five Forces or Seven Ss. But you can't. Strategy is extraordinarily emotional and demanding. — Gary Hamel

Like a child star whose fame fades as the years advance, many once-innovative companies become less so as they mature. — Gary Hamel

In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies. — Gary Hamel

Great accomplishments start with great aspirations. — Gary Hamel

To be embraced, a change effort must be socially constructed in a process that gives everyone the right to set priorities, diagnose barriers , and generate options. — Gary Hamel

An enterprise that is constantly exploring new horizons is likely to have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. — Gary Hamel

It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value. — Gary Hamel

As human beings, we are the genetic elite, the sentient, contemplating and innovating sum of countless genetic accidents and transcription errors. — Gary Hamel

In most languages, 'control' is the first synonym for the word 'manage.' Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain. — Gary Hamel

One way of building private foresight out of public data is looking where others aren't ... if you want to see the future, go to an industry confab and get the list of what was talked about. Then ask, "What did people never talk about?" That's where you're going to find opportunity. — Gary Hamel

As the great grandchildren of the industrial revolution, we have learned, at last, that the heedless pursuit of more is unsustainable and, ultimately, unfulfilling. Our planet, our security, our sense of equanimity and our very souls demand something better, something different. — Gary Hamel

Taking risks, breaking the rules, and being a maverick have always been important but today they are more crucial than ever. — Gary Hamel

All of us are prisoners, to one degree or another, of our experience. — Gary Hamel

A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. — Gary Hamel

Businesses fail when they over-invest in what is at the expense of what could be. — Gary Hamel

This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most companies. — Gary Hamel

You have to train people how to be business innovators. If you don't train them, the quality of the ideas that you get in an innovation marketplace is not likely to be high. — Gary Hamel

Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy. — Gary Hamel

There is no way to create wealth without ideas. Most new ideas are created by newcomers. So anyone who thinks the world is safe for incumbents is dead wrong. — Gary Hamel

One doesn't have to be a Marxist to be awed by the scale and success of early-20th-cent ury efforts to transform strong-willed human beings into docile employees. — Gary Hamel

Whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to stink. The same goes for strategies. How many organizations carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is too late? — Gary Hamel

During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic. — Gary Hamel

**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.**
That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight
a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision.
[first-line bold by author]
[2002] p.23 — Gary Hamel

In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. — Gary Hamel

Organizational structures of today demand too much from a few, and not much at all from everyone else. — Gary Hamel

I was frustrated for a long time with my colleagues in the business school world and with so many management authors who didn't really see themselves as innovators. They were glorified journalists. — Gary Hamel

What matters in the new economy is not return on investment, but return on imagination — Gary Hamel

We live in a moment that is pregnant with possibility. — Gary Hamel

While one should never underestimate the ability of risk-besotted financiers to wreak havoc, the real threat to capitalism isn't unfettered financial cunning. It is, instead, the unwillingness of executives to confront the changing expectations of their stakeholders. — Gary Hamel

Never before has the gap between what we can imagine and what we can accomplish been smaller. — Gary Hamel

Innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance. — Gary Hamel

The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if 'do unto others' really was a rule. — Gary Hamel

The best innovations - both socially and economically - come from the pursuit of ideals that are noble and timeless: joy, wisdom, beauty, truth, equality, community, sustainability and, most of all, love. These are the things we live for, and the innovations that really make a difference are the ones that are life-enhancing. And that's why the heart of innovation is a desire to re-enchant the world. — Gary Hamel

In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart. — Gary Hamel

Most of us do more than subsist. From the vantage point of our ancestors, we live lives of almost unimaginable ease. Here again, we have innovation to thank. — Gary Hamel

Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators. — Gary Hamel

Are we changing as fast as the world around us? — Gary Hamel

Companies do not do new things because they understand it but because they feel it. — Gary Hamel

Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard. — Gary Hamel

Over time, a successful company will acquire much in the way of resources and momentum, and these things often insulate it from reality once it has stopped being successful. — Gary Hamel

At the heart of every faith system is a bargain: on one side there is the comfort that comes from a narrative that suggests human life has cosmic significance, and on the other a duty to yield to moral commands that can, in the moment, seem rather inconvenient. — Gary Hamel

It's not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it's that they no longer believe society's most powerful institutions are acting in their interests. — Gary Hamel

You can't use an old map to see a new land. — Gary Hamel

Truth be told, there are lots of companies that provide exemplary phone support. DirecTV, Virgin America and Apple are a few that regularly exceed my expectations. — Gary Hamel

I am an ardent supporter of capitalism - but I also understand that while individuals have inalienable, God-given rights, corporations do not. — Gary Hamel

In the long term the most important question for a company is not what you are but what you are becoming. — Gary Hamel

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation. — Gary Hamel

The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs. — Gary Hamel

An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety. — Gary Hamel

All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past - by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths. — Gary Hamel

Business leaders must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals, such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty. — Gary Hamel

Building human-centered organizations doesn't imply a return to the paternalistic, corporate welfare practices of the 19th century. Most of us don't want to be nannied. — Gary Hamel

your boss is an older sibling. You'll always be respectful, but you won't hesitate to offer frank advice when you think it's warranted - and you'll never suck up. — Gary Hamel

For every person who can imagine a possibility there are tens of thousands who are stuck in the greased grooves of history. — Gary Hamel

I'm a capitalist by conviction and profession. I believe the best economic system is one that rewards entrepreneurship and risk-taking, maximizes customer choice, uses markets to allocate scarce resources and minimizes the regulatory burden on business. — Gary Hamel

Any company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it. — Gary Hamel

The goal is not to speculate on what might happen, but to imagine what you can make happen. — Gary Hamel

There's a simple, but oft-neglected lesson here: to sustain success, you have to be willing to abandon things that are no longer successful. — Gary Hamel

I don't know whether the universe contains any evidence of intelligent design, but I can assure you that thousands of everyday products do not. — Gary Hamel

Strategy is, above all else, the search for above average returns. — Gary Hamel

We don't know where we're going, but we're not going to stray from familiar paths. — Gary Hamel

When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating. — Gary Hamel

If organized religion has become less relevant, it's not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs - it's because they've held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines. — Gary Hamel

Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries. — Gary Hamel

To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions. — Gary Hamel

Competition for the future is competition to create and dominate emerging opportunities-to stake out new competitive space. Creating the future is more challenging than playing catch up, in that you have to create your own roadmap. — Gary Hamel

For the first time in history we can work backward from our imagination rather than forward from our past. — Gary Hamel

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. — Gary Hamel

You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to. — Gary Hamel

All too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own.
[2002] p.46 — Gary Hamel

Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines. — Gary Hamel

The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon your organization will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent. — Gary Hamel

In the age of revolution you have to be able to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the status quo. If you can't, you'll be relegated to the swollen ranks of keyboard-pounding automatons. — Gary Hamel