“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer…. Therefore, any business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself .… Marketing is the continual process of developing and communicating value to all prospects and customers. “
Other Drucker Quotes:
“Innovation is more likely to emerge from a culture of encouragement…. The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves…. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth….This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity…. It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday…. Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems…. The best way to predict your future is to create it … People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year….”
“Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body….” Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes…. What matters is not the leader's charisma. What matters is the leader's mission…. Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you…. Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else…. The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance…. To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change….”
“Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values, and how they best perform…. People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the non-achievers…. The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it…. A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all…. What's measured improves…. We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”
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