Jack Welch

“Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.”

“Number one, cash is king... number two, communicate... number three, buy or bury the competition.”

“I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.”

“You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.”

“Change before you have to.”

“An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

“A strategy is something like, an innovative new product globalization, taking your products around the world be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch you can motivate people with be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.”

“The Internet is the Viagra of big business.”

“Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.”

“I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.”

“If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy.”

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”

“If GE's strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.”

“In order to lead a country or a company, you've got to get everybody on the same page and you've got to be able to have a vision of where you're going. America can't have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations - can't have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It's got to have a vision.”

“What's important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn't satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn't right, or if the offerings aren't right, it's the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don't get hung up on zeros.”

“I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It's got the market. It's got consumer confidence and it's got banks throwing - I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.”

“The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don't have to work hard.”