The Business Book is the perfect primer to key theories of business and management, covering inspirational business ideas, business strategy and alternative business models. One hundred key quotations introduce you to the work of great commercial thinkers, leaders, and gurus from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs, and to topics spanning from start-ups to ethics.

Reprint of First American Edition, 2014. Includes index.

Start small, think big: Starting and growing the business. If you can dream it, you can do it -- There's a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? -- You can learn all you need to know about the competition's operation by looking in his garbage cans -- The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows -- Be first or be better -- Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket -- Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get -- Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward -- Nothing great is created suddenly -- The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel -- Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken -- A corporation is a living organism : it has to continue to shed its skin -- Without continuous growth and progress, success has no meaning -- If you believe in something, work nights and weekends -- it won't feel like work -- Lighting the fire: Leadership and human resources. Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing -- None of us is as smart as all of us -- Innovation must be invasive and perpetual: everyone, everywhere, all of the time -- Dissent adds spice, spirit, and an invigorating quality -- No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven -- A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way -- Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results -- Leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do -- The way forward may not be to go forward -- The more a person can do, the more you can motivate them -- Be an enzyme -- a catalyst for change -- The worst disease that afflicts executives is egotism -- Emotional intelligence is the intersection of heart and head -- Management is a practice where art, science, and craft meet -- A camel is a horse designed by committee -- The art of thinking independently, together -- Making money work: Managing finances. Do no let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business -- Executive officers must be free from avarice -- If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled -- Borrow short, lend long -- The interests of the shareholders are our own -- Make the best quality of goods at the lowest cost, paying the highest wages possible -- Utilize OPM -- other people's money -- Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom -- Debt is the worst poverty -- Cash is king -- Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked -- Return on equity is a financial goal that can become an own goal -- As the role of private equity has grown, so have the risks it poses -- Assign costs according to the resources consumed -- Working with a vision: Strategy and operations. Turn every disaster into an opportunity -- If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses -- The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the main thing -- You don't need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person -- Don't get caught in the middle -- The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do -- Synergy and other lies -- The Chinese word "crisis" is composed of two characters: "danger" and "opportunity" -- You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term -- Market attractiveness, business attractiveness -- Only the paranoid survive -- To excel, tap into people's capacity to learn -- The future of business is selling less of more -- To be an optimist ... have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose -- Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable -- The strongest competitive forces determine the profitability of an industry -- If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete -- If you don't know where you are, a map won't help -- Chaos brings uneasiness, but it also allows for creativity and growth -- Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astonish the other -- There is no such thing as a minor lapse in integrity -- Make it easier to do the right thing and much harder to do the wrong thing -- Successful selling: Marketing management. Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department -- Know the customer so well that the product fits them and sells itself -- Attention, Interest, Desire, Action -- Marketing myopia -- The cash cow is the beating heart of the organization -- Expanding away from your core has risks; diversification doubles them -- If you're different, you will stand out -- There is only one boss: the customer -- Whitewashing, but with a green brush -- People want companies to believe in something beyond maximizing profits -- Everybody likes something extra for nothing -- In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to -- Make your thinking as funny as possible -- E-commerce is becoming mobile commerce -- Trying to predict the future is like driving with no lights looking out of the back window -- Product, place, price, promotion -- Delivering the goods: Production and postproduction. See how much, not how little, you can give for a dollar -- Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced -- If the pie's not big enough, make a bigger pie -- Eliminate unnecessary steps -- Every gain through the elimination of waste is gold in the mine -- Machines, facilities, and people should work together to add value -- Learning and innovation go hand in hand -- Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning -- Technology is the great growling engine of change -- Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a highway -- Put the product into the customer's hands -- it will speak for itself -- The desire to own something a little better, a little sooner than necessary -- Time is money -- A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder -- Taking the best from the best.