33+ Theodore Levitt Quotes On Education, Government And Socialism

Theodore Levitt was an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School. He is best known for his 1960 Harvard Business Review article, "Marketing Myopia," in which he argued that companies should focus on their customers’ needs rather than on the products they produce. Levitt was a major influence in the development of modern marketing theory and practice. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Theodore Levitt on leadership, education, government.

Top 10 Theodore Levitt Quotes

1. Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories.
2. The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going.
3. Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo.
4. The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money.
5. Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.".
6. Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
7. Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.
8. Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.
9. An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill
10. Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day.

Theodore Levitt Short Quotes

• Anything in excess is a poison.
• One should not focus on the differences between people but look for commonality and similarity.
• Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others.
• Ideas can be willed, and the imagination is their engine.
• People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.
• A product is not a product unless it sells. Otherwise it is merely a museum piece.
• People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole!
• Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly.
• Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits.

Theodore Levitt Quotes About Innovation

In spite of the extraordinary outpouring of totally and partially new products and new ways of doing things that we are witnessing today, by far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation. — Theodore Levitt

CREATIVITY is thinking up new things. INNOVATION is doing new things. — Theodore Levitt

What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work. — Theodore Levitt

Ideas are useless unless used. — Theodore Levitt

Theodore Levitt Famous Quotes And Sayings

The fact that a consistendy highly creative person is generally irresponsible in the sense that we have used this term is in part predictable from what is known about the freewheeling fantasies of very young children. — Theodore Levitt

Though progress starts with the imagination, only work can make things happen. And work itself works best when fueled, again by the imagination. — Theodore Levitt

Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection. — Theodore Levitt

A powerful force drives the world toward a converging commonality, and that force is technology. … Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies. — Theodore Levitt

Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management. — Theodore Levitt

You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging — Theodore Levitt

The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete. — Theodore Levitt

Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariable does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs. — Theodore Levitt

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. — Theodore Levitt

All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things. — Theodore Levitt

Life Lessons by Theodore Levitt

1. Theodore Levitt taught that success comes from identifying and meeting customer needs, rather than simply producing and selling products.
2. He also believed that companies should focus on innovation and creativity to stay ahead of the competition.
3. Levitt's lessons emphasize the importance of understanding customer needs and staying ahead of the curve to remain competitive in the business world.