Gary Hamel quotes

Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy. (Gary Hamel)
Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. View quote
Gary Hamel
An enterprise that is constantly exploring new horizons is likely to have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. View quote
Gary Hamel
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors. View quote
Gary Hamel
As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating. View quote
Gary Hamel
A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. View quote
Gary Hamel
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but its pretty much the whole game today. View quote
Gary Hamel
All too often, legacy management practices reflexively perpetuate the past - by over-weighting the views of long-tenured executives, by valuing conformance more highly than creativity and by turning tired industry nostrums into sacred truths. View quote
Gary Hamel
You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to. View quote
Gary Hamel
We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation. View quote
Gary Hamel
Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard. (Gary Hamel)
A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority. View quote
Gary Hamel
Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent. View quote
Gary Hamel
Online hierarchies are inherently dynamic. The moment someone stops adding value to the community, his influence starts to wane. View quote
Gary Hamel
In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies. View quote
Gary Hamel
As human beings, we are the genetic elite, the sentient, contemplating and innovating sum of countless genetic accidents and transcription errors. View quote
Gary Hamel
Like a child star whose fame fades as the years advance, many once-innovative companies become less so as they mature. View quote
Gary Hamel
Remarkable contributions are typically spawned by a passionate commitment to transcendent values such as beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor. View quote
Gary Hamel
When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating. View quote
Gary Hamel
It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value. View quote
Gary Hamel
In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. (Gary Hamel)
Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines. View quote
Gary Hamel
The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if 'do unto others' really was a rule. View quote
Gary Hamel
An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety. View quote
Gary Hamel
I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms. View quote
Gary Hamel