Peter Drucker Quotes

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.

Communism is evil. Its driving forces are the deadly sins of envy and hatred.

If general perception changes from seeing the glass as 'half-full' to seeing it as 'half empty' there are major innovative opportunities.

The honest work of yesterday has lost its social status, its social esteem.

Culture eats Christianity for breakfast.

The basic economic resource - the means of production - is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor. It is and will be knowledge.

There are just two questions to ask to attain success in business: First, "What business am I in?" Second, "How's business?"

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone's work assignment and responsibility.

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection.

Education gives you neither experience nor wisdom.

The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.

The 1st question the effective decision-maker asks is: 'Is this a generic situation or an exception?'

Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present!

Most organizations staff their problems & starve their opportunities.

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.

Spontaneity is an infinite number of rehearsed possibilities.

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

There are no creeds in mathematics.

The fruit of your work grows on other people's trees

The days of the 'intuitive' manager are numbered.

Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.

There's no such thing as knowledge management; there are only knowledgeable people. Information only becomes knowledge in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it.

In the managerial organization, the top people sit in judgment; in the innovative organization it is their job to encourage ideas, no matter how unripe or crude.

Organizations are no longer built on force, but on trust.

The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.

Time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday's time is gone forever, and will never come back. Time is always in short supply. There is no substitute for time. Everything requires time.

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity

The most effective way to manage change is to create it.

The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.

We've spent the last 30 years focusing on the T in IT, and we'll spend the next 30 years focusing on the I.

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.

Far too much reorganization goes on all the time. Organizitis is like a spastic colon.

Ideas are like frog eggs: you've got to lay a thousand to hatch one.

In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world.

All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Conductors do not know how the oboe does its work, but they know what the oboe should contribute.

Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced.