It’s not often that I quote Tom Peters, but on some things he’s absolutely dead-on. I’ve just seen the latest slides on his presentation deck and it has some great quotes from him and others. Here are a few gems…

“When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: “Finish your dinner – people in China are starving.” I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework – people in China and India are starving for your job’.
– Thomas Friedman in NYT on 6.24.2004)

“Leadership = Art
therefore
MBA = Useless”
– Tom Peters

“There is little evidence that mastery of the knowledge acquired in business schools enhances people’s careers, or that even attaining the MBA credential itself has much effect on graduates’ salaries or career attainment.”
– Jeffrey Pfeffer (happily tenured Stanford Professor – and author of the Knowing-Doing Gap)

“How do dominant companies lose their position? Two-thirds of the time, they pick the wrong competitor to worry about.”
– Don Listwin, CEO of Openware commenting on Nokia in WSJ 06.01.2004

“Sam Palmisano’s strategy is to expand tech’s borders by pushing users – and entire industries- toward radically different business models. The payoff for IBM would be access to an ocean of revenue – Palmisano estimates it at $500 billon a year – that technology companies have never been able to touch.”
– Fortune, 06.14.04