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My favorite: "It’s ok to make mistakes but it’s not ok to be timid." I know in silicon valley that sort of thinking is encouraged, but in most of corporate Amer

• simon 15y ago
  In Cubicleville thinking outside of the box is frowned upon, operating outside of the box is punished swiftly and even realizing that the box has an outside is dangerous.
• wanorris 15y ago
  If your job is to shepherd, say, Proctor and Gamble forward, then the upside of boldness is radically less than if you're Amazon. And the downside of boldness, profligate spending, is likely to come out of your margins without ever being made up in the long term. In a relatively mature segment, operational discipline is more important than big ideas and plans. Since the reward system is different, it attracts different people, and a more suitable mentality. This is heavily related to why it's so often that the best people from a growth company leave as the business matures -- the skills that make you great at growing a company will not make you equally successful at managing an existing business, even aside from the fact that growth-company people usually don't like doing the more mundane tasks of a later-stage business.