Theodore Levitt Professions : Economist Born : March 1, 1925 Died : June 28, 2006 Browse All Authors Top 34 quotes by Theodore Levitt People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes. Theodore Levitt deep-thought want people Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. Theodore Levitt creativity change thinking People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole! Theodore Levitt holes want people The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going. Theodore Levitt engineering purpose clever Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly. Theodore Levitt done The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money. Theodore Levitt true-purpose purpose customers Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo. Theodore Levitt useless action ideas Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories. Theodore Levitt film photography memories An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill Theodore Levitt patents skills needs Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariable does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs. Theodore Levitt effort views people All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things. Theodore Levitt organization done people Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Theodore Levitt organization business people A product is not a product unless it sells. Otherwise it is merely a museum piece. Theodore Levitt pieces products museums Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress. Theodore Levitt creativity change ideas Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation. Theodore Levitt innovation organization order Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management. Theodore Levitt marketing shadow growth What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work. Theodore Levitt creating creativity ideas Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day. Theodore Levitt improvement matter littles A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. Theodore Levitt powerful business responsibility The fact that a consistendy highly creative person is generally irresponsible in the sense that we have used this term is in part predictable from what is known about the freewheeling fantasies of very young children. Theodore Levitt irresponsible creative persons Similar Authors Bryan Caplan economist Burton Malkiel economist Bruno Frey economist Brian Wesbury economist Branko Milanovic economist Andrew Samwick economist All Authors
