Visionary Company Quotes & Sayings

If what you believe doesn't depend om what you see, you've been blinded as effectively as by poking out your eyeballs. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don't have a "great idea," we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation. — James C. Collins

It was the same Dimitri from long ago, the fierce one who was willing to risk his life for what was right. I almost wished he'd go back to being annoying, distant Dimitri, the one who told me to stay away. Seeing him now brought back too many memories -not to mention the attraction I thought I'd smashed. Now, with that passion all over him, he seemed sexier than ever. He'd worn that same intensity when we'd fought together. Even when we'd had sex. This was the way Dimitri was supposed to be: powerful and in charge. — Richelle Mead

We should not regret our mistakes from the past and think about possible opportunities for our future. — Saaif Alam

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark. — Pablo Neruda

May you gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything. — Soren Kierkegaard

Not since the original Mac had a clarity of product vision so propelled a company into the future. If anybody was ever wondering why Apple is on the earth, I would hold up this as a good example — Walter Isaacson

The day should come when all of the forms of life ... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. — William O. Douglas

Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment. — James C. Collins

Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company. — Tadashi Yanai

And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice. — Hart Crane

It often turns out very differently to how you feared. — Nina George

Our findings do not represent a quick fix, or the next fashion statement in a long string of management fads, or the next buzzword of the day, or a new 'program' to introduce. No! The only way to make any company visionary is through a long-term commitment to an eternal process of building the organization to preserve the core and stimulate progress. — James C. Collins

I'm a walking advertisement for PBS and for the Discovery Channel. All of my DVR settings are pretty much set to record anything that's on the Discovery Channel. I'm a big fan of 'MythBusters' and 'Deadliest Catch,' and I'm constantly watching 'Moyers & Company' and the 'NewsHour' and 'Antiques Roadshow.' — Thomas Sadoski

Comfort is not the objective in a visionary company. Indeed, visionary companies install powerful mechanisms to create /dis/comfort
to obliterate complacency
and thereby stimulate change and improvement /before/ the external world demands it. — James C. Collins

Wright is a visionary with a great strategic mind, and he's a strong business leader with outstanding people skills, ... He's a terrific guy and will be a key force in guiding the company's future growth. — Jack Welch

A visionary company doesn't simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable. — James C. Collins

The techniques of being an Internet visionary are just like those of lower-tech fortunetellers through the ages. A technological visionary must tell people what they want to hear, because your company's stock won't rise if you spout an unpopular vision to analysts. — Nathan Myhrvold

It's about waking up in the morning with everything around you looking gray. Gray sky, gray sun, gray city, gray people, gray thoughts. And the only way out is to have another drink. Then you feel better. Then the colors come back. — Sergei Lukyanenko

A visionary company is like a great work of art. Think of Michelangelo's scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or his statue of David. Think of a great and enduring novel like Huckleberry Finn or Crime and Punishment. Think of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Shakespeare's Henry V. Think of a beautifully designed building, like the masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. You can't point to any one single item that makes the whole thing work; it's the entire work - all the pieces working together to create an overall effect - that leads to enduring greatness. — John C. Maxwell

A great company in the media business needs visionary leaders, not a conglomerate structure headquartered in Columbus Circle that second guesses. — Carl Icahn

Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. — Paul Graham

Rule number one about your mate: he is completely wrong until you decide he is not. — Quinn Loftis

If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself. — Lionel Trilling

His job already had him lying and manipulating me. My past had me lying and manipulating him. Both of us thought we were right. — Lisa Gardner

Indeed, if there is any one "secret" to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change - a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies. — James C. Collins

To have a Welch-caliber C.E.O. is impressive.To have a century of Welch-Caliber C.E.O.'s all grown from the inside - well, that is one key reason why G.E. is a visionary company. — James C. Collins

Like the railroads that bankrupted a previous generation of visionary entrepreneurs and built the foundations of an industrial nation, fiber-optic webs, storewidth breakthroughs, data centers, and wireless systems installed over the last five years will enable and endow the next generation of entrepreneurial wealth. As Mead states, "the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to get a company going during the bubble". Now, Mead says, "there's space available; you can get fab runs; you can get vendors to answer the phone. You can make deals with people; you can sit down and they don't spend their whole time telling you how they're a hundred times smarter than you. It's absolutely amazing. You can actually get work done now, which means what's happening now is that the entrepreneurs, the technologists, are building the next generation technology that isn't visible yet but upon which will be built the biggest expansion of productivity the world has ever seen. — George Gilder

It's nontrivial for a company and everyone in it to know "who we are." A little bit easier, however, is to know "who we aren't." When even that knowledge is missing - when there is no basis in the company to say about a given cockamamy scheme "it just isn't us" - the company clearly lacks vision. Vision implies a visionary. There has to be one person who knows in his or her bones what's "us" and what isn't. And it can't be faked. Employees can smell an absence of vision the way a dog can smell fear. — Tom DeMarco

How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most. — Stephen R. Covey

A visionary company is one which is seen growing in a consistent pattern by being goal oriented driven by a vision and a mission — Henrietta Newton Martin

One of the most important steps you can take in building a visionary company is not an action, but a shift in perspective. — James C. Collins