Theodore Levitt Quotes & Sayings

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories. — Theodore Levitt

An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill — Theodore Levitt

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil. — Theodore Levitt

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. — Theodore Levitt

Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo. — Theodore Levitt

You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging — Theodore Levitt

Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things. — Theodore Levitt

Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation. — Theodore Levitt

Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.". — Theodore Levitt

The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete. — Theodore Levitt

Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly. — Theodore Levitt

All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things. — Theodore Levitt

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. — Theodore Levitt

A product is not a product unless it sells. Otherwise it is merely a museum piece. — Theodore Levitt

Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others. — Theodore Levitt

Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management. — Theodore Levitt

Ideas are useless unless used. — Theodore Levitt

People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes. — Theodore Levitt

Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariable does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs. — Theodore Levitt

A consistently highly creative person is generally irresponsible. — Theodore Levitt

In spite of the extraordinary outpouring of totally and partially new products and new ways of doing things that we are witnessing today, by far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation. — Theodore Levitt

Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day. — Theodore Levitt

The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money. — Theodore Levitt

Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits. — Theodore Levitt

Ideas can be willed, and the imagination is their engine. — Theodore Levitt

What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work. — Theodore Levitt

Though progress starts with the imagination, only work can make things happen. And work itself works best when fueled, again by the imagination. — Theodore Levitt

Anything in excess is a poison. — Theodore Levitt

A powerful force drives the world toward a converging commonality, and that force is technology. ... Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies. — Theodore Levitt

The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going. — Theodore Levitt

Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection. — Theodore Levitt

Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress. — Theodore Levitt