Sublime

After the company reached a plateau of success (at about $15 million in revenues and 75 employees), M refused to move forward with anything new, bold, or risky. The company stagnated. Ambitious people left.

I’m Jane Smith, the founder and CEO of Wild Widgets. Industrial Magazine named us Top Widget Maker of the Midwest, which was a huge honor in our business. I’ve scaled back from six to two staff and am looking to build

One evening Kelleher was talking to a business executive at a cocktail reception in Dallas. “I see that American now has fares as low as yours,” the man said. “Yes,” Kelleher admitted. But American, he patiently explained, required passengers to buy a ticket 30 days in advance. By contrast, Kelleher said cheerfully, anyone could walk right up to th

What he did was both obvious and, at the same time, unexpected. He shrunk Apple to a scale and scope suitable to the reality of its being a niche producer in the highly competitive personal computer business. He cut Apple back to a core that could survive.

“In a family-owned firm,” Bock said, “what gets rewarded more than anything is loyalty.”

“We are a highly financially successful airline, and the focus of the entire airline industry, the public, and the legislators in Washington,” the presentation read. “Maximization of the financial (e.g., cost cutting, marketing, peanuts fares, debt structure, etc.) was historically correct and absolutely essential for this company’s survival at one

In the early years, a shareholder asked CEO Herb Kelleher if Southwest couldn’t raise its prices by just a few dollars since its $15 price on the Dallas–San Antonio route was so much lower than Braniff’s $62 fare. Kelleher said no, our real competition is ground transportation, not other airlines.