Business Ideas Quotes & Sayings

There's no shortage of remarkable ideas, what's missing is the will to execute them. — Seth Godin

Of course you're right. It's just a hell of a time to be alive, is all - just this goddamn messy business of people having to get used to new ideas. And people just don't, that's all. I wish this were a hundred years from now, with everybody used to the change. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them. The way you'll get big ideas in, say, health care is by starting out with small ideas. If you try to do some big thing, you don't just need it to be big; you need it to be good. And it's really hard to do big and good simultaneously. So, what that means is you can either do something small and good and then gradually make it bigger, or do something big and bad and gradually make it better. And you know what? Empirically, starting big just does not work. That's the way the government does things. They do something really big that's really bad, and they think, Well, we'll make it better, and then it never gets better.
Building Fast Companies for Growth, Inc. September 2013 — Paul Graham

Almost all systems of economic thought are premised on the idea of continued economic growth, which would be fine and dandy if we lived on an infinite planet, but there's this small, niggling, inconvenient fact that the planet is, in fact, finite, and that, unlike economic theory, it is governed by physical and biological reality — George Monbiot

Small budgets require brave ideas. — David Hieatt

Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them. — Seth Godin

Large-scale change is grounded in small steps toward a big idea — Stewart Friedman

The success of any user generated content-related project should be judged in the long term. Try not to use it as a one-off campaign activation idea. Think of it instead as the beginning or continuation of an ongoing dialogue with your consumers. — Damian Thompson

Competition is. In every business, no matter how small or how large, someone is just around the corner forever trying to steal your ideas and build his success out of your imagination, struggling after that which you have toiled endless years to secure, striving to outdo you in each and every way. If such a competitor would work as hard to originate as he does to copy, he would much more quickly gain success. — Alice Foote MacDougall

People get hired based off of a certain look or something like that and they have no intention of paying their dues or even respecting the business. It's not a good idea to do that. — CM Punk

On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true. — James Surowiecki

Having the ability to be brutally honest with yourself is the greatest challenge you face when creating a business model. Too often we oversell ourselves on the quality of the idea, service, or product. We don't provide an honest assessment of how we fit in the market, why customers will buy from us, and at what price. — Mark Cuban

UNTIL I TOOK UP distance running, I found it easy to take it easy. I had no difficulty following the warnings of the experts. "Avoid stress," cautioned the physicians. I did. "Reduce your tensions," advised the psychologists. I did. "Rest that restless heart," counseled the clergy. I did. Doing these things requires no effort when you are lacking what Santayana called America's ruling passion - a love for business - when you are a lifelong non-joiner whose greatest desire is not to become involved, when almost everyone you meet is less interesting than your own ideas, and when your inner life has more reality than your outer one. — George Sheehan

You don't need a business plan. You don't need to have an MBA. All you need is a great idea. Anything is possible and you can accomplish it. — Ron Conway

When I have an idea, I share it with everyone. People say someone will steal my idea, but it's not like I invented something that will replace the toilet. I tell people to get their feedback. Will they buy it, help me improve it, or tell me it's already been done? If someone else is excited, he or she might buy into the business. — Cameron Johnson

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?" — Edward Lampert

You have to free your brain to roam to places that are a little impractical, and innovation consultants have come up with some great ways to encourage that. One of my favorites comes from Legrand, who tells people in group brainstorming sessions to try to come up with the WORST possible ideas that they can think of ... Once you have a list of really, really bad suggestions - and coming up with them does force your brain to work in a different way - you try to flip them over into the positive. — Amanda Lang

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas. — Tina Fey

The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or another. — Paul Feyerabend

Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea. — Mark Pincus

The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it serves us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients. We actually have a rather good track record, because we do select projects carefully. Most of our ideas don't eat dust but glimpse the light of day because we find it much more helpful to spend some serious time and effort before we start working on a project, rather than suffer through it afterwards. — Stefan Sagmeister

Give up control and give it away ... The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth. — Seth Godin

If you wish to find, you must search. Rarely does a good idea interrupt you — Jim Rohn

Letting users control your site can be terrifying at first. From day one we were asking ourselves, "What is going to be on the front page today?" You have no idea what the system will produce. But stepping back and giving consumers control is what brought more and more people to the site. They have a sense of ownership and discovery at the same time. If you give users the tools to spread and share their interests with others, they will use them to promote what is important to them. — Kevin Rose

The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time. — Henry Ford

The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it. — H.L. Mencken

Having colleagues nearby, whether at the beach or in a crypt, means the ideas are always flowing — Richard Branson

Emotion. Passion. Ideas. Simplicity. These are the big things that big business needs from its creative agencies. No one else is going to provide these essential elements for business. — Kevin Roberts

When you're feeling overwhelmed in business, one smart idea can beat the biggest Super Bowl ad. — Courtney Love

If by 'intellectual' you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts and forming ideas for people in power, and telling people what they should believe ... they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task it is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population SHOULD be anti-intellectual in that repect. — Noam Chomsky

For most people, creativity is a serious business. They forget the telling phrase 'the play of ideas' and think that they need to knuckle down and work more. Often, the reverse is true. They need to play. — Julia Cameron

Priming works best when you are on autopilot, when you aren't trying to consciously introspect before choosing how to behave. When you are unsure how best to proceed, suggestions bubble up from the deep that are highly tainted by subconscious primes. In addition, your brain hates ambiguity and is willing to take shortcuts to remove it from any situation. If there is nothing else to go on, you will use what is available. When pattern recognition fails, you create patterns of your own. In the aforementioned experiments, there was nothing else for the brain to base its unconscious attitudes on, so it focused on the business items or the clean smells and ran with the ideas. The only problem was the conscious minds of the subjects didn't notice. — David McRaney

President Herbert Hoover returned his salary to the government. His idea caught on, and now we're all doing it. — Sam Ewing

An Athenian citizen does not neglect his state because he takes care of his own household; even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We do not regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs as harmless. We do not say that such a man 'minds his own business'. Rather we say he has no business here at all. — Pericles

It was my idea that if you started any kind of business, you should begin somewhere near where you hoped to end. In other words, if I wanted to make really good clothes to order, I would start out making good, and therefore expensive, clothes to order. If I started making inexpensive clothes, I thought probably I'd die making them. — Elizabeth Hawes

Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not. — Michael Dell

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. — Edward L. Bernays

As I now see it, America had no business involving itself in a series of distant convulsions where the ideas, variously interpreted, of a long-dead German economist were bringing biblical calamity to China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. — Martin Amis

Couture has copied my things for years, in addition to countless other costume designers, claiming theirs were the original ideas. It's all part of the business, unfortunately. — Edith Head

But business is just a vehicle for transforming the ideas in your head into something real, something tangible, that actually improves the lives of others. To create something unique and beautiful and valuable is very hard. It's very special to do. It doesn't happen fast. — James Altucher

Ultimately, innovation depends on the people with advanced skills who have the ideas, and on the business risk-takers willing to back them. — Anthony Pratt

We do not live in a world of dreams, but in an Universe which while relative, is real so far as our lives and actions are concerned. Our business in the Universe is not to deny its existence, but to LIVE, using the Laws to rise from lower to higher--living on, doing the best that we can under the circumstances arising each day, and living, so far as is possible, to our biggest ideas and ideals. The true Meaning of Life is not known to men on this plane .if, indeed, to any--but the highest authorities, and our own intuitions, teach us that we will make no mistake in living up to the best that is in us, so far as is possible, and realising the Universal tendency in the same direction in spite of apparent evidence to the contrary. We are all on The Path--and the road leads upward ever, with frequent resting places. — Three Initiates

The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked. — David Ogilvy

There's a clarity that comes with great ideas: You can [easily and simply] explain why something's a great business, how and why it's cheap, why it's cheap for temporary reasons and how, on a normal basis, it should be trading at a much higher level. You're never sitting there on the 40th page of your spreadsheet, as Buffett would say, agonizing over whether you should buy or not. — Joel Greenblatt

Interest in the arts among entrepreneurs, inventors, and eminent scientists obviously reflects their curiosity and aptitude. People who are open to new ways of looking at science and business also tend to be fascinated by the expression of ideas and emotions through images, sounds, and words. — Adam M. Grant

Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader. — Paul Krugman

Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really. — Jared Harris

I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don't think that's a painter's business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason. — Jasper Johns

In setting up a business under the name and meaning of the Golden Rule, I was publicly binding myself, in my business relations, to a principle which had been a real and intimate part of my family upbringing. Our idea was to make money and build business through serving the community with fair dealing and honest value. — James Cash Penney

The more you progress, the more you learn. I try to pay attention to ticket counts, draws, guarantees and bonuses. I look at my deals closely these days and try to come up with other projects and ideas, since this business [comedy] is about creating content. — Hannibal Buress

When you find an idea that you just can't stop thinking about, that's probably a good one to pursue. — Josh James

Someday, you need to build a business that's difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea. — Sam Altman

In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses. — Marshall McLuhan

The thing I hate about the film business, is having to pitch your idea. — Crispian Mills

I've never been one who enjoys maintaining the status quo. I'm always pushing for new ideas, whether it's in business or philanthropy. — Eli Broad

Book publishers needed only to listen to Jeff Bezos himself to have their fears stoked. Amazon's founder repeatedly suggested he had little reverence for the old "gatekeepers" of the media, whose business models were forged during the analogue age and whose function it was to review content and then subjectively decide what the public got to consume. This was to be a new age of creative surplus, where it was easy for anyone to create something, find an audience, and allow the market to determine the proper economic reward. "Even well meaning gatekeepers slow innovation," Bezos wrote in his 2011 letter to shareholders. "When a platform is self-service, even the improbable ideas can get tried, because there's no expert gatekeeper ready to say 'that will never work!' And guess what - many of those improbable ideas do work, and society is the beneficiary of that diversity. — Brad Stone

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do [x]?", "Do you plan to add [y]?". Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait - put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features. — Derek Sivers

We have to remember that making money is essentially exchanging one form of energy for another form of energy - we are exchanging our ideas, our creativity, our passions, for money...we are asking people to take money out of their bank accounts and put into ours because our ideas and our creativity is more valuable to them than their money. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis. — T. Boone Pickens

My best ideas come in the shower, where I'm showered with water, but also ideas. — Ryan Lilly

You'd better have the technology knowledge. I really urge you not to think you can start a whole company and business with just ideas on paper, because you'll end up owning so few of those ideas. — Steve Wozniak

Great ideas often have no reference points.
We have nothing to compare them to. They are original, and awkward. And so they are the most vulnerable to people trying to kill them. They do not conform to what exists, so they challenge us. — David Hieatt

Don't wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary 'what if' scenarios dreamed up in a conference room. — Naveen Jain

In a sense one should not go to books for ideas; the business of books is to make one think. We are not gramophone records, we are to think originally. What we preach is to be the result of our own thought. We do not merely transmit ideas. The preacher is not meant to be a mere channel through which water flows; he is to be more like a well. So the function of reading is to stimulate us in general, to stimulate us to think, to think for ourselves. Take all you read and masticate it thoroughly. Do not just repeat it as you have received it; deliver it in your own way, let it emerge as a part of yourself, with your stamp upon it. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it's almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute. — Jason Fried

You look at any giant corporation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well. — Irv Robbins

In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. — Phil Dusenberry

The superhero genre speaks to a vast swath of humanity these days, and studios are in the business of constantly renewing their money-printing licenses. I sense we're nearing a saturation point with some of these icons, where it becomes more about the action figures and Happy Meals than it does the mythological heartbeat of the core ideas. — Mark Frost

There was just such a man when I was young - an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into strom troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people. — T.H. White

Don't get the idea that I've turned green. My business is making money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money. — T. Boone Pickens

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others. — Thomas A. Edison

Crowdsourcing can greatly increase the number of ideas entering the front-end of the innovation funnel, however, using the wrong source can result in a large number of inappropriate ideas, and the lack of defined process for managing the progress of ideas through the funnel can result in the funnel becoming blocked. — D. James Kennedy

Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Business. Capture Every Fleeting Idea And Drive For Change. — Richard Branson

From the time I was a kid, I was always interested in any and all kinds of new business ideas. — Red McCombs

First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket. — Eric Hoffer

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. — Howard Aiken

The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There's an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win. — Seth Godin

Consider this 're-make' business that is taking away opportunities for new ideas and new films to happen. If the movie was made right the first time, why make it again? The only reason this is happening is it has become a safer way for the Studios. — Bernie Brillstein

When you have a creative business and ideas generated from people working together, I think you can work happier together. — Diane Nelson

Immigration is everyone's business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate. — Geoffrey Blainey

Build it and they will come' is one of the most idiotic ideas conceived by man. — B.C. Chase

Avoid committees and consensus in developing big, distinctive business model advantages. Individuals have big, distinctive ideas; committees and consensus turn big, distinctive ideas into mundane ideas. — Bob Herbold

This ego business has come from various sources, you know that, but it has to be cleansed out. Like when the river flows all kinds of dirt, filth flows into it, but when it meets the sea it becomes the sea. In the same way you have to become that. To become the sea what you have to do is to forget all these tributaries which were coming into you, and all these wrong ideas which came to you. — Nirmala Srivastava

One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don't share ideas. — Dorothy Nevill

If you just go out and try to make money by starting a business, you're going to come up with something that's just like what everyone else has done. But if you look at the world and see opportunities that can be taken more seriously, then you come up with a great idea. — Blake Mycoskie

A good idea for a new business tends not to occur in isolation, and often the window of opportunity is very small. So speed is of the essence. — Richard Branson

Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose a second thing and become a master of that. When you become a master of two worlds (say, engineering and business), you can bring them together in a way that will a) introduce hot ideas to each other, so they can have idea sex and make idea babies that no one has seen before and b) create a competitive advantage because you can move between worlds, speak both languages, connect the tribes, mash the elements to spark fresh creative insight until you wake up with the epiphany that changes your life. — Justine Musk

To be creative, an idea must also be appropriate - useful and actionable. It must somehow influence the way business gets done by improving a product, for instance, or by opening up a new way to approach a process. — Teresa Amabile

I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you. — Mark Cuban

My idea of government support was, you supply me with hospitals, schools and the environment to do well and that will do me fine. But do not poke your nose in my business. — Alan Sugar

We are certain that for every one of these rock stars we meet in our daily work, there are dozens or even hundreds more who are doing their best to unseat us from our perch. Maybe all of them will fail, but probably not. Probably, somewhere in a garage, dorm room, lab, or conference room, a brave business leader has gathered a small, dedicated team of smart creatives. Maybe she has a copy of our book, and is using our ideas to help her create a company that will eventually render Google irrelevant. Preposterous, right? Except that, given that no business wins forever, it is inevitable. Some would find this chilling. We find it inspiring. — Eric Schmidt

Do your homework or hire wise experts to help you. Never jump into a business you have no idea about. — John Templeton

Basically, the UBR is a relic of an earlier vision for UDDI. The original vision for UDDI was as a standard that would help companies conduct business with each other in an automated fashion. The idea was that companies could publish how they wanted to interact, and other companies could find that information and use it to establish a relationship. — Michael Bloomberg

Business ideas are like those flying dragons in Avatar. First you have to find one, let it choose you, then be brave enough to ride it. — Ryan Lilly

It will help erase the idea that politics is a second-rate profession and a dirty business. — Robert Kennedy

In addition to the exterior packaging, don't forget the items that go inside of the package, such as hang tags, free stickers, posters, postcards and other freebies. You can get stickers printed for a low cost at 123stickers. For postcards and any other printing, we recommend NextDayFlyers. You can also make hang tags yourself by printing them as business card and punching ⅛" holes into them (then attach them to your products using a tagging gun). Use your creativity to come up with additional affordable packaging ideas. — Moust Camara

The pace of change for entrepreneurs is rapidly accelerating, and the cost and risk of launching a new business and getting off the ground is just amazing. The ability to gain user feedback really quickly and adapt to what your consumers want is totally different with the web as it is now. But finding a new market, helping people and taking that original idea and turning it into a business is really exciting right now. — Matt Mickiewicz

Technically my boss, Laynie's most notable trait was her ability to focus intently on a project until it was completed. In other words, she was a little obsessive. It was actually a great characteristic when it came to work. She always thought of everything, never missing a detail. Her brain worked on overdrive, and while she liked to talk incessantly about business, her passion and creative ideas made sure the subject never grew old. — Laurelin Paige

No party or event is without a reason. This is how we foster new relationships, open doors, and launch new ideas that create business opportunities, investments, and jobs in the U.S. and Spain. — James Costos

Ms. Ellie Bockert Augsburger, owner of Creative Digital Studios, did a most excellent job. I feel compelled to mention that she had great ideas for Storm Warning. When asked to switch, she did so with ease, for this and many other reasons, I highly recommend her. In addition to cover art, she does graphic designs for businesses. She did a silhouette of an eagle similar to the one on Call Sign: Wrecking Crew (Wings of Eagles) for our business logo. — Lynn Hallbrooks