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Business Quotes by Peter Drucker

117 Business quotes by Peter Drucker

All Business quotes Peter Drucker’s page

Peter Drucker points out that a clear mission defines what a business really is, not its name or paperwork. He says results are what set one company apart from another, and that marketing is the special function that makes a business stand out. He also notes that entrepreneurs are not lonely lone wolves.

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Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.

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The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it's selling.

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The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

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

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Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.

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Manage yourself and then your company.

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If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old

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Results is all that separates one company from another.

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Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.

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Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

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There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing, everything else is cost.

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The most probable assumption is that no currently working 'business theory' will be valid 10 years hence.

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Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

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Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

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Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.

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It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, The enterprise must demand it of him.

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The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed,…

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Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or…

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The corporation is the "master", the employee is the "servant". Because the corporation owns the means of production without which the employee…

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Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

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The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of…

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If a business is to be considered a continuous process, instead of a series of disjointed stop-and-go events, then the economic universe…

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The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong…

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There are two types of people in the business community: those who produce results and those who give you reasons why they…

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Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or…

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Tomorrow always arrives. It is always different. And even the mightiest company is in trouble if it has not worked on the…

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Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise itself as the relationship to government. The manager has responsibility for this relationship…

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Few relationships are as critical to the business enterprise as the relationship to the government. Managers have responsibility for this relationship as…

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No business can do everything. Even if it has the money, it will never have enough good people. It has to set…

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There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're…

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“An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else.…

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Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees…

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What is the manager's job? It is to direct the resources and the efforts of the business toward opportunities for economically significant…

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..there is need for a person to be generally educated. Otherwise you shrivel up much too soon. Whether this means reading the…

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What gets measured gets managed.

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Business is society's change agent.

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“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

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Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works.

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Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

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The enterprise, by definition, must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it.

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More by Peter Drucker

One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the "hotel services" by the people who dominate…

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

Results is all that separates one company from another.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Peter Drucker”

Our society has become an employee society.

Replace your pursuit of success with the pursuit of contribution.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for…

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

The critical question is not "How can I achieve?" but "What can I contribute?"

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

When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella. Others reach for a big spoon.

The enterprise can fulfill its human and social functions only if it prospers as a business.

The computer actually may have aggravated management's degenerative tendency to focus inward on costs.

Nobody can predict the future; the idea is to have a firm grasp of the present.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.