Quote

We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.

Lou Gerstner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lou Gerstner
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 1
Business Executive
Businessperson
Mineola
New York
Customers
Built
Company
Business
Back
Customer

More quotes by Lou Gerstner

Image
Everything starts with the customer.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You can never be comfortable with your success, you've got to be paranoid you're going to lose it.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The thing I have learned at IBM is that culture is everything.
Lou Gerstner
Image
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
Lou Gerstner
Image
If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.
Lou Gerstner
Image
What we believe is going to be very important is the delivery of traditional software and services and hardware over the Net. That's a form of electronic marketplace.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Our military should be trained and structured around missions, not the elements of air, water, and land.
Lou Gerstner
Image
If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?
Lou Gerstner
Image
A lot of people saved IBM. Yes, I was the leader of that team but I could never have done it without a group of IBMers helping me.
Lou Gerstner
Image
I have always believed you cannot run a successful enterprise from behind a desk.
Lou Gerstner
Image
We do not need Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education we need a single Department of Skills that will promote an integrated approach to global competitiveness.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Visit USA.gov and you'll find thousands of directorates, agencies, boards, offices, and services replete with overlapping responsibilities, ancient priorities, and divided accountability.
Lou Gerstner
Image
IBM needed - an enormous sense of urgency.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.
Lou Gerstner
Image
For the first month, I listened, and I tried very hard not to draw conclusions
Lou Gerstner
Image
Never confuse activity with results.
Lou Gerstner
Image
Every now and then, a technology comes along that is so profound, so powerful, so universal, that its impact will change everything. It will transform every institution in the world. It will create winners and losers, will change the way we do business, the way we teach our children, communicate and interact as individuals.
Lou Gerstner
Image
The fundamental issue is: In the world of the Internet, is there a place for a packager of services? Does the customer want to go surf the Net and go to every one of 50,000 Web sites? Or will people pay a reasonable amount for somebody to go out and preselect and package what they want? My guess is they will both coexist.
Lou Gerstner
Image
People don't do what you expect but what you inspect.
Lou Gerstner