Quotes in business
The common objection to seniority pay is, "It's rewarding dead wood!" My response is, "Why do you hire dead wood? Or why do you hire live wood and kill it?"
Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.
New product and new types of service are generated, not by asking the consumer, but by knowledge, imagination, innovation, risk, trial and error on the part of the producer, backed by enough capital to develop the product or service and to stay in business during the lean months of introduction.
American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don’t know what to copy!
No defects, no jobs. Absence of defects does not necessarily build business… Something more is required.
No one can measure the loss of business that may arise from a defective item that goes out to a customer.
The consumer is the most important point on the production-line.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
Does the customer invent new product or service? The customer generates nothing. No customer asked for electric lights. There was gas and gas mantles, which gave good light. The first electric lights had carbon filaments. They were fragile and inefficient. No customer asked for photography. No customer asked for the telegraph, nor for a telephone. No customer asked for an automobile. We have horses: what could be better’? No customer asked for pneumatic tires. Tires are made of rubber. It is silly to think of riding on air. The first pneumatic tires in the United States were not good. The user had to carry with him rubber cement, plugs, and a pump, and know how to use them.