Lester Carl Thurow (May 7, 1938 – March 25, 2016) was an American political economist, former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of books on economic topics.
One of the peculiarities of economics is that it still rests on a behavioral assumption-rational utility maximization-that has long since been rejected by sociologists and psychologists.
We've believed for 50 years that the Japanese are small Americans who wanted to be like us. They are not.
AT&T invented the cellular telephone, but saw no future in it. It takes entrepreneurs, who are angels of destruction, to take advantage of things which the inventor cannot or does not see.
A competitive world offers two possibilities. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change.
Change requires individuals who recognize that new things can be done and who take the initiative to get them done. . . The existing bureaucracies, public and private, will not take on the job of changing what is.
Major investment decisions have become too important to be left to the private sector.
Without entrepreneurs, economies become poor and weak. The old will not exist, the new can't enter
Technology and Ideology are shaking the foundations of 21st century capitalism. Technology is making skills and knowledge the only sources of sustainable strategic advantage.
Economists are always recommending the elimination of this or that market imperfection. . . no astrophysicist recommends the elimination of planets that he does not like.
Natural resources have dropped out of the competitive equation. In fact, a lack of natural resources may even be an advantage. Because the industries we are competing for - the industries of the future - are all based on brainpower.
The old foundations of success are gone. . . The world's wealthiest man, Bill Gates, owns nothing tangible: no land, no gold or oil, no factories. . . For the first time in history the world's wealthiest man owns only knowledge.
There is nothing antithetical in American history, culture, or traditions to teamwork. Teams were important in America's history - wagon trains conquered the West, men working together on the assembly line in American industry conquered the world, a successful national strategy and a lot of teamwork put an American on the moon first (and thus fare, last). But American mythology extols only the individual. . . In America, halls of fame exist for almost every conceivable activity, but nowhere do Americans raise monuments in praise of teamwork.
If a group of people has no sense where they came from-it is difficult for them to have a sense where they should go.