“If you benchmark on everything, you simply become more similar to your competitors and move into a red ocean space which is highly, highly, brutally competitive. There's only room for one, maybe two at most, cost-cutting businesses.”
— Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & advertising strategist and behavioral economist

The quote archive

Wisdom in fragments

A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.

The key both in the US and the UK is to have hand-raisers – people who want to take a chance, and get involved. That is a spirit that you see both in the UK and in America.

— Matthew W. Barzun

U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, France, and the United Kingdom

Too often I feel there is also a search for 'the next' Steve Jobs or Joanna Shields. These are extraordinary people and yet I believe we should not treat entrepreneurialism as requiring a narrow checklist of certain characteristics.

— Matthew W. Barzun

U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, France, and the United Kingdom

The overlap of these two is incredibly fertile territory and this is exactly where businesses in the U.S. and UK see each other – places where they both need to do business and want to do business.

— Matthew W. Barzun

U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, France, and the United Kingdom

My mind just never stopped thinking about what we could be doing next.

— will.i.am

Grammy-winning rapper, producer, and member of The Black Eyed Peas

You have to keep reaching, keep thinking about what the next-level is.

— will.i.am

Grammy-winning rapper, producer, and member of The Black Eyed Peas

What I've learned about tech is that it's cold and robotic; you don't know any of the people who make the stuff you live on.

— will.i.am

Grammy-winning rapper, producer, and member of The Black Eyed Peas

'Brand,' is what journalists and industry-people say… we say culture movement. As artists we say culture! Movement! And analysts say brand. I don't know what a brand is, but I know what a freakin' movement is….

— will.i.am

Grammy-winning rapper, producer, and member of The Black Eyed Peas

Entrepreneurship is the relentless drive to carry-on, no matter what. Entrepreneurship is tolerance, focus and dedication. Entrepreneurship is this 'true north' belief that whatever this 'thing' is that you want to bring to culture, that you will see it through… and that you are the one here to usher it into existence.

— will.i.am

Grammy-winning rapper, producer, and member of The Black Eyed Peas

Mental health conditions are extraordinarily common, conservatively 1 in 4 of us will suffer from one or more in our lifetime, and I defy you to find someone who hasn't seen the impact firsthand.

— Unknown

We have to start breaking the toxic hyper-masculine alpha male attitude that has become the norm across businesses that you should always be hustling, never sleep, that rest is for wimps.

— Unknown

I have anxiety and depression, I don't 'suffer with them' as the description would normally go. I have them in the way I have arms, legs, eyes and a mouth, they are a part of me.

— Unknown

As business-leaders we have to start taking responsibility to speak-out about our own struggles, so that others do the same- and by doing so, make our teams and our peers realise that it's fine to not be fine.

— Unknown

By 2025, we're going to see 40-50% of all tech entrepreneurs being women, and that's good news.

— Adeo Ressi

I see it as my moral obligation in this world to help these people unlock their potential so they can start working on humanity's grand challenges.

— Adeo Ressi

From the data I've collected, about 2% of humanity is qualified to be an entrepreneur. If we got to a point where the full 2% pursued entrepreneurship as a viable way to live their lives? The amount of problems we would solve in human-society would be astounding.

— Adeo Ressi

You can't be successful unless you're genuine as a human being and honest. The startups in our world that are really successful are both genuine and honest; they bring that pure level of passion to the table and they're very honest about the world around them.

— Adeo Ressi