651 Posts Found

The research state of mind can apply to anything; personal affairs or any kind of business, big or little. It is the problem solving mind as contrasted with the let-well-enough-alone mind. It is the composer mind instead of the fiddler mind. It is the ‘tomorrow’ mind instead of the ‘yesterday’ mind.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subjects: Innovation, Problems / Solutions

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subject: Knowledge

Obsolescence is a factor which says that the new thing I bring you is worth more than the unused value of the old thing.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subjects: Innovation, Progress

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man’s head. It is not what we know that is important, it is what we do not know.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subjects: Change Management, Problems / Solutions

Information should not be plentiful or easy to share. Information sharing that makes data readily available is more of a curse than a cure. A manager’s biggest decision will be rationing scarce attention. New information technologies that help filter and redirect e-mail and telephone calls can certainly help, but ultimately management decision-making is all about setting priorities. Good managers tend to want to identify and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: CEO Refresher | Subject: Information

The data that we observe, whether personally or organizationally, is selected, filtered, and interpreted through our assumptions and beliefs. To a great degree we “see what we believe” and are unable to perceive data that lies outside our existing mental models. Our current way of thinking, whether it be personal or collective, governs our perception of reality and thus holds great influence in our ability … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Thought

If we trust only when trust is warranted, love only when love is returned, learn only when learning is valuable, we abandon an essential feature of our own humanness-our willingness to act from our conception of who we are, regardless of the consequences.

Content: Quotation | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Life, Wisdom

As intellectual historian Crane Brinton pointed out in his book Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought, fields of study such as philosophy, religion, and politics generate “noncumulative” knowledge as opposed to the scientific domain, where knowledge is “cumulative” and progress is genuine. The real problem with arts or noncumulative fields of study is that, unlike the sciences, they never prune their trees of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Thought

…the moral, however relevant, is not what’s most notable to a student of storytelling. What’s remarkable is that when listeners hear the start of such a story – whether fable, personal remembrance, or corporate myth – they implicitly agree to a certain set of rules as an audience. Rather than judge the veracity of each fact presented, as they would in a traditional analytical presentation, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Communication, Persuasion

Organizations of all kinds are cluttered with control mechanisms that paralyze employees and leaders alike. Where have all these policies, procedures, protocols, laws, and regulations come from? And why is it so difficult to avoid creating more, even as we suffer from the terrible confines of overcontrol? These mechanisms seem to derive from our fear — our fear of one another, of a harsh competitive … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Fear / Doubt, Organizational Behavior

The distinction between process and procedure is essential. Procedures contain only explicit knowledge. Processes embed procedures in tacit knowledge of both the expert and the social kinds. Many of the problems of reengineering can be traced to the treatment of processes as though they were procedures – i.e., as though people’s tacit knowledge didn’t matter.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Knowledge, Process

It was the fatal conceit of socialism, in Hayek’s famous phrase, that wise government bureaucrats could guide society to a better future. Substituting red aspirations with green ones does not change the undertaking’s essential nature-or its likelihood of success.

Content: Quotation | Source: The Economist | Subjects: Economics, Government

Intelligent folks learn from their own mistakes; wise folks learn from the mistakes of others.

Content: Quotation | Source: GrokDotCom | Subjects: Mistakes, Wisdom

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Content: Quotation | Source: Various | Subject: Mistakes

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

Content: Quotation | Source: Various | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Thought

Every chunk of knowledge has a limited shelf life; at some point that knowledge becomes obsolete, or, as we say, turns into “obsoledge” – ideas and assumptions that have been falsified by change and surrogates or proxies that are no longer appropriate to the topic at hand. In fact, given the acceleration of change, companies, individuals, and governments base many of their daily decisions on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Information, Knowledge

Lazy orthodoxies can allow new entrants to thrive in niches that seem full of capable incumbents.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Competition, Opportunity

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Content: Quotation | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Attitude, Opportunity

A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.

Content: Quotation | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subjects: Opportunity, Risk Management

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Content: Quotation | Subject: Life