Top 500 Business Quotes

There are people with otherwise chaotic and disorganized lives, a certain type of person that's always found a home in the restaurant business in much the same way that a lot of people find a home in the military.

By now, it seems as if everyone has already read Thomas L. Friedman's 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.' It changed the way we think about global business, competitiveness and the implication for far-flung economies, governments, education and more.

It's funny: in the middle of making 'The Muse,' I was offered, at the time, the first 'Ice Age,' the part that Ray Romano took: I was offered the elephant. And I couldn't even stop to breathe, so I didn't do it. They've made, like, six of them. And in the animation business, for a voice actor, that's what you want. You want six, you know?

There's a fundamental problem with how the software business does things. We're asking people who are masters of hard-edged technology to design the soft, human side of software as well. As a result, they make products that are really cool - if you happen to be a software engineer.

The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way enterprise software is being sold is you get to try it first and then buy it.

When you think about little league football, high school, and even on to college even more so, you're dealing with a lot of guys that are prideful, that think they're the best - a lot of alpha males. So, typically, you've got to have a guy that can control those guys, and, when he talks, they know he means business. He's a serious guy.

What I learned from my years in Silicon Valley is that design can have a primary role in how a business is shaped, how a company can be design-driven. In my experience of large industry in Europe, that knowledge has been lost.