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Theodore Levitt Biography

Theodore Levitt (March 1, 1925, Vollmerz, Main-Kinzig-Kreis, Germany – June 28, 2006, Belmont, Massachusetts) was an American economist and professor at Harvard Business School. He was also editor of the Harvard Business Review and an editor who was especially noted for increasing the Review's circulation and for popularizing the term globalization. In 1983, he proposed a definition for corporate purpose: Rather than merely making money, it is to create and keep a customer.

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Theodore Levitt Quotes

People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want to buy a quarter-inch hole!

Buy, Hole, Holes, People, Want

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

Imagination, Make, Make Things Happen, Progress, Work

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.

Clever, Engineering, Expertise, Purpose

Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day.

Focusing, Improvement, Littles, Matter, Things, Uncelebrated

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

Ideas, Imagination, Like, Natural, Nothing, Science

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.

Business, Company, Kick, Powerful, Responsibility

Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly.

Badly, Done, Experience, Wisdom

Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking. ".

Antonym, Creative, Innovation, Simple, Thinking

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.

Business, Creative, Advice, Difficult, Infinitely, Abstract

A consistently highly creative person is generally irresponsible.

Consistently, Creative, Generally, Irresponsible, Person, Persons

A product is not a product unless it sells. Otherwise it is merely a museum piece.

Museums, Pieces, Product, Products, Sells, Unless

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.

Destroy, Done, Organization, Organizations, People

People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.

Deep Thought, Drills, Holes, People, Want

Ideas are useless unless used.

Creativity, Ideas, Innovation, Unless, Used, Useless

Anything in excess is a poison.

Poison, Excess

An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill

Begins, Needs, Patent, Patents, Selling, Skills

Ideas can be willed, and the imagination is their engine.

Ideas, Imagination, Science, Willed

The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money.

Create, Customers, Keep, Purpose, True, True Purpose

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories.

Film, Kodak, Memories, Photography

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.

Enthusiasm, Growth, Market, Marketing, Reason, Shadow

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