Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Business school professors don't take selling seriously because they don't know how to sell. It's easy to talk about business theory and production time and just-in-time development. Selling is much more difficult.
The time I have already spent at Harvard has been a stimulating experience, and I look forward to developing my relationship and activities with the students, faculty and friends of the Harvard Business School community.
I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations.
I wanted to be a writer, to write these stories that would make people see the world in a different way. But I ended up going to business school because I thought I could ultimately get to where I wanted to go faster that way.
I took a job at the Walt Disney Company and after 18 months decided to go to business school at Harvard. I was awestruck by the campus. My first reaction was 'I don't belong here.' Then I said, 'I'm here; let's get on with it.'
It's obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn't come out of a business school curriculum. It comes out of a laboratory or a math lecture or a physics tutorial.
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
All the lessons I learned from my grandfather from the day I was born until the day he passed away served me well, and I think about them and use them every day. It was much more valuable than any business school could have provided.
I was a general business major, which meant that in any business school and particularly at Smith School, which is a very good school, you do a lot of team projects. Well I was the guy who gave the presentations for the team projects.
I was actually accepted into medical school in Italy. But then I wanted to come back and learn medicine in Germany. And while waiting, I decided to join a business school. I figured it would be useful for doctors to know some business as well!
As a young analyst just out of Stanford business school in the 1960s, I got to really understand what growth was about. Back then, you had to ask a customer to pay some money. That was the most important thing in getting a company off the ground.
I was at business school doing pretty well for myself, had a few offers from some great companies. But when I traveled across the world, I was shocked by just how much pain, struggle, and anguish people had to go through to have basic necessities.
I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs. I went to Harvard Business School. I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment.
I went to business school so what they teach you in business school was that success is about positioning yourself to get lucky. It's not just about how hard you work. It is also about a little bit of luck. To position yourself to catch the luck when it comes.
I teach at the Stanford Business School, and about half of my students are foreign, many of whom, I hope, will stay and build businesses in U.S. But I must tell you that they also have opportunities to come back to India and start great companies and operations.
I went to Harvard College and determined right away when I was a junior that I was unemployable, since I think I applied to 300 jobs and didn't get any of them, so I decided that I would stay in school and go to Harvard Business school, and that's my background.
I remember, the first time it struck me is I was an econ major at Stanford as an undergrad, and it struck me how few women were econ majors back in the '70s. And then in business school how few women... And even then, I thought, 'Gosh, this is really unfortunate.'
I was fortunate that I came out to the Valley in 1979, when I came out to go to Stanford Business School, and my very first assignment as a teaching assistant for an investments professor was to - he told me go down to this computer company in Cupertino called Apple.
I went to art school in Chicago for a year at Columbia College. I had this whole master plan of getting into sustainable development and green architecture and construction, so I wanted to go to business school and then get my masters in construction and development.
If I had done 'Go, New York, Go' for the Spurs, it might not have worked. It really taught me a lot about demographics and tastes and styles. I never went to business school, so that whole experience was my crash course in marketing, contracts, negotiations, and product launches.
'Savage' is a trait that might get you into business school or retweeted 10,000 times. It's what a kid might say after somebody does something awesome or gnarly or fierce: 'Oh, that's savage!' It's the skate park. It's the high-school cafeteria. It's the YouTube comments section.
I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.
Between being governor and part of the Senate, one of the things I did was I held a chair at the business school at my alma mater, Indiana University. And I'd go to lecture the graduates, and I loved that, answering their questions. It was real; it was tangible, and it was making a difference every day.
At the Harvard Business School, I really felt I had gained the ability to resolve difficult issues. But I also felt that I wasn't in the mainstream with my fellow students. During job-hunting season, for example, everybody shaved their beards for interviews. I thought, 'This is crazy.' So I grew a beard.
The focus around Circle China is really cross-border payments. If I'm a parent in China and my son is studying at London Business School, I might want to send 500 RMB. I should be able to do that and have my child instantly receive it as pounds sterling, in the same way people do that with instant messages today.
The lessons I learned from my mother and her friends have guided me through death, birth, loss, love, failure, and achievement, on to a Fulbright scholarship and Harvard Business School. They taught me to believe that anything was possible. They have proven to be the strongest family values I could ever have imagined.
It was the first fight I had with my father. My father basically said, why are you going to business school? You're just going to get married and have kids and you won't use your degree. And it's expensive. We had a knockdown, drag-out fight, which was great. Yeah. In the driveway. My father said, 'You're on your own.'
One of the people who most influenced me was Ben Shapiro, a marketing professor at the business school. He used to rant and rave and pound his fist: 'It's all about the customers!' And he was right. He was also right that, at that time, retailing was devoid of really talented people; he urged me to go in that direction.
I was in the business school. I was on the executive board of the business school and I kinda gave all that up and forewent a full scholarship to walk on at the University of Maryland. I just wanted to challenge myself, play at the top level and see if I could hang with the big boys, kinda get that national spotlight and play in prime time games.