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A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.

James C. Collins

First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn’t the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Ideas Important Product Team
Creative leadership impact increases in your 50’s. When I turn 50 I want to say, “Nice start!”
JAMES C. COLLINS

Creative Impact Nice
In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Communication Fundamentals Important
I’ve never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Decision Leadership Organization
We learned that a former prisoner of war had more to teach us about what it takes to find a path to greatness than most books on corporate strategy.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Book Corporate Greatness Strategy War
Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Ideas Liability People Personality
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Continuity Great Tension
Change your practices without abandoning your core values.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Core Practice Values
Everytime you think of it, the idea in your head seems to get more vivid, filled in with more detail:
JAMES C. COLLINS

Every Time Filled Seems Think
If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I’d put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Everything Many Organization Running
I am completely Socratic.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Completely Emotion Socratic
Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Company Great Markets People Technology
A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Change Extreme Stimulating Visionary
Our findings do not represent a quick fix, or the next fashion statement in a long string of management fads, or the next buzzword of the day, or a new ‘program’ to introduce. No!
JAMES C. COLLINS

Commitment Fashion Organization
We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Choices Defeat Mistakes
By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Average Definitions Good Great

A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.

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A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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