Corporate Evolution Quotes

Microsoft wasn't born as an enterprise company. We have always been growing with end users in mind.

In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital.

So in one leap we had gone from being a friendly society to something almost professional.

It is the logical next step in our ongoing effort to shift our company's centre of gravity, accelerate our growth

Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.

I think Microsoft will have to change. I think that the business of Microsoft, the company of Microsoft, is going to continue to succeed. But I think the business model of Microsoft is going to have to change.

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services.

When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.

Corporation 2020 is an indispensable contribution to the global transformation of finance and corporations as humanity re-integrates centuries of knowledge and continues its inevitable transition from the first Industrial Era... Pavan Sukhdev is a powerful standard-bearer leading us to the cleaner, knowledge-rich Green Economy globally, and this book provides a benchmark and guide to this better future for humanity.

I see the level of sophistication and knowledge about business growing dramatically. Several decades ago, only a few companies thought about international business.

The real story of Netflix is complicated: an epic tale full of struggle, disappointment, drama, humor, and achievement.

There are companies which are prepared to change the way they work. They realize that nothing can be based on what used to be, that there is a better way. But, 99 percent of companies are not ready, [they are] caught in an industrial Jurassic Park.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.

Companies can change. Culture can change.

Governments have a unique opportunity to incentivise corporations so that they can accelerate their evolution to a more sustainable economy through more sustainable practices and products.

As a company grows, its purpose grows with it. It has the potential to evolve your purpose.

Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don't reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that's true of people. And I think it's true of countries.

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.

An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in. Microsoft started with programming tools, but came out with an operating system. Oracle started doing contracts for the CIA. AOL started out as an online video gaming network.

In 1947 American corporations thought of themselves as national with offices abroad. Today, they see themselves as global corporations with headquarters in the United States.

Microsoft, Disney, Ford, Facebook, and a hundreds and thousands of other companies that affect us daily all began life as baby companies, aka start-ups.

Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.

For us, we are moving a company that has been around for 137 years to the next level so that we can be there for the next 137 years.

The question remains: which brands will commit to creating a private sector pillar of social change, and which will become casualties of their own outdated thinking?