“Humans often come together by believing in ideas that may only exist in our imaginations. 50 years ago, talking to somebody on the other side of the world with a device that fits in your hand, walking on the moon, or sending a rocket to Pluto would have been beyond our realities and could only have been possible with magic.”
— David Blaine
Illusionist & Street Magician Known for Endurance Stunts & Television Specials

The quote archive

Business

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

There simply isn't enough creativity and bandwidth at the top to deal with the level of complexity and change in today's world. In bureaucratic structures, a small group of leaders can hold the organization's capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt.

— Gary Hamel

Management theorist & author who revolutionized strategic thinking

Bureaucracy may be humankind's most important innovation. Whether it's scientific innovation, the invention of the steam engine, locomotive, electric-motor, semi-conductor or antibiotics, none of these would have been possible without the understanding of how to work precisely and repeatably at scale; bureaucracy.

— Gary Hamel

Management theorist & author who revolutionized strategic thinking

I believe businesses need to move away from having profit as their primary reason for existing. Profit primacy can be replaced by mission primacy.

— Perry Chen

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

The traditional sources of capital for ideas — investment, charity, rich relatives, grants — are nowhere near sufficient to the number of good ideas in the world.

— Perry Chen

Founder of Kickstarter, crowdfunding platform pioneer

Romance and suspense are consistently the number 1 selling genres in the world, but don't forget even suspense can have romance – it's a huge genre. The part of the genre that has been ignored is female forward romance. Most of the decision-makers in film have been men, and that's now changing as more female filmmakers get out there.

— Tosca Musk

Producer and Director, known for Tesla and SpaceX documentaries

For large corporations, globalization opened up opportunities without the correlate responsibilities which usually travel with that- so things that banks must do at home they didn't have to do abroad. This took globalization out of balance, into a vicious cycle – and we're now dealing with the consequences of that.

— Ngaire Woods

Director of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University

It's about creating legal accountability around the creation of value for stakeholders, not just shareholders. That's what changes the conversation in the boardroom.

— Andrew Kassoy

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Ultimately, we want to make it unnecessary to be a B Corp – we want it to be just the norm of how all businesses are run, but that means we have to change the rules of the game and the role of business in society.

— Andrew Kassoy

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Businesses have a tremendous amount of power to have impact through practices and business models that operate ethically, create useful goods and services, create jobs with dignity, and create opportunities in communities that may not have existed before.

— Andrew Kassoy

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Systems change is slow because it requires consensus that there is a system failure to start with, as well as the presence of a viable alternative. This requires a combination of culture shift, behavioral change, and structural change to ultimately change the rules of the game.

— Andrew Kassoy

Co-Founder of Bridgewater Associates & Pioneer in Radical Transparency

Even though we'd achieved so much success, going solo felt like a clean slate that I could pursue on my own. I'm travelling the world, making music from my heart, making the videos of my dreams and working with a team who believe in me. It's been liberating!

— Ally Brooke

Former Fifth Harmony Member & Solo Artist

I actually think social media can be fine, and in fact if you look at the first year or two of any particular social media, they often start out quite charming before the stupid business model kicks in where companies can only make money by having third parties inject money into the system.

— Jaron Lanier

Pioneer of Virtual Reality & Critic of Social Media

Today's consumer cares about what you stand for, and so having values and purpose are central to building that trust with your customer.

— Jacqueline Gold

Founder and former CEO of Ann Summers lingerie and party plan business

As a nation, we're missing out by not being more flexible, accommodating and encouraging and I think lockdown has- at least- brought about that one piece of positive change.

— Jacqueline Gold

Founder and former CEO of Ann Summers lingerie and party plan business

Climate change is a real, and present, threat to the economy – and to all classes of national and private assets. If you manage other people's money, you have a fiduciary duty to de-risk it by managing for climate change.

— James Thornton

Environmental lawyer and founder of ClientEarth

I think you're going to see impact models that challenge many of our incumbent industries. The most vulnerable in our society are currently overcharged because the system assumes, they are higher-risk, and so those in our society who are least able to afford charges, are being charged huge overdraft and borrowing rates.

— Sir Ronald Cohen

Founder of Social Venture Network & Pioneer of Social Impact Investing