Theodore Levitt

United States
1 Mar 1925 // 28 Jun 2006


Quotes



Your career is literally your business.

Only the Paranoid Survive (1996)
All too often, people believe that creativity automatically leads to innovation. It doesn't.

'Ideas are Useless Unless Used,' Inc. (1981)
Creativity is thinking new things. Innovation is doing new things.

'Ideas are Useless Unless Used,' Inc. (1981)
A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognised, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words to action.

'Ideas are Useless Unless Used,' Inc. (1981)
There is no shortage of creative people in American business. The shortage is of innovators. All too often people believe that creativity leads to innovation. It doesn't.

'Ideas are Useless Unless Used,' Inc. (1981)
The scarce people are the ones who have the know-how, energy, daring, and staying power to implement ideas... Since business is a 'get-things-done' institution, creativity without action-oriented follow-through is a barren form of behavior. In a sense it is irresponsible.

'Ideas are Useless Unless Used,' Inc. (1981)
The future will be a future of more and more intensified relationships, especially in industrial marketing, but also increasingly in frequently-purchased consumer goods.

Marketing Imagination (1993)
The organization exists to restrict and channel the range of individual actions and behaviors into a predictable and knowable routine.

Harvard Business Review (1963)
Without organizations, there would be chaos and decay.

Harvard Business Review (1963)
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays