Steve Blank Quotes

The main professional responsibility of a person in business is business.

Relentless improvement of the product and upgrading of consumer tastes are the heart of mass merchandising.

When you found a company, you have the original vision, you make all the original decisions, you know every employee, you kind of know every aspect of the product architecture and its limitations.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.

Since the beginning, HTC has focused on developing strong research and development capabilities and keeping a close eye on consumer, market and technology trends.

Currently, I am overseeing the construction of the new Trump Tower in Chicago. I am involved in meeting with the construction crews, architects and sales teams. I am learning a lot and working with some of the best in the business.

I've been good at product entrepreneuring.

Every time we bring someone in we ensure that they are a strategic thinker, but even more important that they understand that if the products aren't successful and the products don't sell that there won't be anything to strategize about.

If I invest in a CEO, I need him or her to have experience in sales.

No one would say, 'Hey, I think this medicine works, go ahead and use it.' We have testing, we go to the lab, we try it again, we have refinement. But you know what we do on the last mile? 'Oh, this is a good idea. People will like this. Let's put it out there.'

You can be a great researcher, and you can think you have great ideas, but until you're forced to talk to a potential customer, you never really know.

I don't think it ever occurred to me that I wouldn't be an entrepreneur. My dad became a real estate developer, and that work is usually project-based. You attract investors for a project with a certain life cycle, and then you move on to the next thing. It's almost like being a serial entrepreneur, so I had that as an example.

A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.

All you can worry about as CEO is making sure your company continues to build great products, deliver the revenue, and keep your customers happy.

A company's commitment to searching out potential blockbusters and then investing in marketing to convert potential to reality attracts and retains top scientists and creatives.

It will be a priority for me to ensure the smooth and speedy implementation of defence deals and projects.

Technical co-founders are great at envisioning where the company's going from a strategic standpoint. They have what I call the 'gut-feel' of building out their business.

I was the lead designer and the general manager of the triple 7 and, of course, the dynamite 787.

Bell Labs was a fantastic research organization but having them create and market new products for the world was terrible. They were not good marketers and yet it was AT&T engineers who were deciding what the products of the future were.

To create something you want to sell, you first study and research the market, then you develop the product to the best of your ability.

The simplest way to assure sales is to keep changing the product the market for new things is indefinitely elastic. One of the fundamental purposes of advertising, styling, and research is to foster a healthy dissatisfaction.

I'll take the deal, whatever you want to do.

In many cases, you're forced to make deals that are not the deal you'd make.

It would be easier to be tough on Russian than make a deal. I don't know if we'll make a deal.

Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.