If you have recently heard the word EAT, you are temporarily more likely to complete the word fragment SO_P as SOUP than as SOAP. The opposite would happen, of course, if you had just seen WASH. We call this a priming effect and say that the idea of EAT primes the idea of SOUP, and WASH primes SOAP.
— Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
The press would like to write the sort of teenage model of competition, which is ‘I have a gun, you have a gun, who shoots first?’
The adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other.
— Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, The Wall Street Journal; December 4, 2012
Besides, do you really think that the quality of individual titles is the cause of this collapse? The nation is facing nothing less than a fiction crisis. Four of the five best-selling books last year on Amazon were works of nonfiction, and the fiction title, “Mill River Recluse,” was a Kindle download. The theatrical box office recently saw its worst weekend in 10 years. Narrative television — the quality of shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” notwithstanding — is in decline. The most-watched shows are sports and reality spectacles. Anyone who has engaged in the make-believe required for most video games to work their magic knows that games are fiction too. Why would games be immune?
— Chris Sullentrop, as quoted in “Gaming Faces its Archenemy: Financial Reality.” New York Times; October 3, 2012
Youth occurs in a time of its own, immune to criticism from those claiming to have had better youths. As idiotic and privileged as it might seem on the surface, growing up is no easy thing. Every passage to adulthood is a hero’s journey, to be respected, in its own way.
— Mark Jacobson, “Haunts.” New York; October 1, 2012
Oh, how he hated to hear the lies. He [Forstmann] wanted to shout, ‘You bastards!’ but held his tongue. He had always told his partners that once you lose your temper, you lose the deal.
— Bryan Burrough & John Helyar, on Ted Forstmann; Barbarians at the Gate
Nobody thought that J.B. Williams, home of over-the-hill brands such as Geritol and Aqua Velva, would fetch more than $50 million. But Johnson unloaded it for twice that, applying his usual charm and telling potential buyers how badly Nabisco had been running the business. He convinced them that Williams had worlds of potential. “I learned,” he said, “you always tell people how badly you’ve been running the god-damned company, so they’ve got some upside.”
— Bryan Burrough & John Helyar, on Ross Johnson; Barbarians at the Gate
You’d have to credit Steve Jobs with making business something that didn’t belong to the suits. — David Carr, New York Times
Sometimes what appears to be a difficult ethical quandary is simply the product of ignorance about your options.
— John Kroger, Convictions
…if you have to take some risks, it is often better to do so as quickly as possible. This is obvious to those who play tennis: everyone knows to take more risk on the first serve and hit the second serve more cautiously. That way, if you fail on your first attempt, the game won’t be over. You may still have time to take some other options that can bring you back to or even ahead of where you were. The wisdom of taking risks early applies to most aspects of life, whether it be career choices, investments, or dating.
— Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff, The Art of Strategy
Do not fear the established. When I first started the company, I was really scared that we were going to be crushed by the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ or Goldman Sachs. After a few years, I realized that these large companies are so slow to move, and so slow to adapt, that they simply don’t innovate. — Barry Silbert, CEO, Second Market
