You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.
If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.
Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus' success in the spreadsheet - basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
I can remember the first time I tried to drive into the garage of the world headquarters of Ford in a Camry. It was almost like they wouldn't let me in. They said, 'Why do you want to do that?' I said, 'Because we are going to make the best cars in the world, and we need to know everything about the competitor's car.'
I pride myself on being able to create mismatches. That's what I've done my whole life.
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.
I'm all for it. In these days, regional marketing is the only way to survive.
We can't continue to always base our strategy on the fact that the other guy is going to mess up all the time.
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't - you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work.
I have the mindset of a coach. I have to think, what would a coach think? How would a coach feel if I'm playing a guy a certain way?
It's best to keep a strategic fight and try to win because the level of the sport is so high.
One of the changes I'm driving within Nokia is to adopt what we call 'the challenger mindset.' Let's understand that we have to fight, we have to fight our way through the difficulties, we have to listen to consumers, we have to both deliver what they need and also have some creativity and insight and deliver what the don't yet know they need.
Our approach is not to look at the successes of other people and try to repeat those successes. We don't look at the success of 'Grand Theft Auto 3' and think that maybe if we create games for older audiences will see a similar success.
How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it.
The most frequent request we get at the FCC is from companies who say, “Please regulate my rival.” The Commission can become a new tool for competitive strategy.
If you're up against a smart opponent, make him think himself to death.
Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we're going to win.
I'm more convinced than when I accepted this job that we can create a viable Ford Motor Co. that makes cars and trucks that people really do prefer. And we can make them using minimum resources and minimum time and be competitive with our competition.
It's not easy being number two. As a marketer, you have limited choices - you can pretend you're not defined by the market leader, or, you can embrace your position and go directly after your nemesis.
Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks.
Sports is such a cyclical thing; it's often feast or famine. But what you try and do as an owner is build a winning organization.
I just challenge the big guys and attack them, and use my quickness to my advantage.
The reality of life is, if you have a bagel shop and everybody is pouring into the doughnut shop across the street, if you want to stay in business, you start selling doughnuts.
It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.
It's my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world; to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one.
