Max McKeown

You have to learn to see the gold in dirt, which means that you try to spot people with potential as well as ideas that have potential.

Strategy is not really a solo sport - even If you're the CEO.

Who's more likely to succeed - someone with high skill and no ambition, or no skill and high ambition? If you're an entrepreneur, you can hire as many skilled people for your business as you want.

Entrepreneurs don't believe the future is predictable - but they do believe that they can create the future themselves.

Entrepreneurs are like cats, because they are independent and do their own thing. Although organisations say they like cats, what they really want is sheep that they can herd.

There are immense numbers of potential entrepreneurs who can start their own businesses among the people who are working in large organisations.

If you change the rules of the market, you can be more successful than your competitors.

Change is not overcoming inertia as much as it is redirecting, guiding, tweaking what already is and what has already happened. We must believe that we can make choices and that those choices can alter the future.

At the point that an idea approaches perfection, fashion and expectations surge ahead, leaving the innovator with considerable room to find further improvements.

The founder of Dell found ways of delivering Hewlett Packard's most profitable products for much lower prices but forgot to deliver their quality so within a few years had fallen behind again. Ideas need constant renewal. A great idea will never be perfect and will never work perfectly in all markets and all seasons.

Amazon thrived because it implemented the online bookstore idea better than any of its early rivals did, not because it was the only company to have the idea or the first company to have the idea. It continues to grow only because it keeps trying to improve on the details of the idea and the way it puts it into practise.