Summit Sound Bites
“We can bail out the economy — we cannot bail out the environment.”
—John Doerr (MBA ’76), Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
“Our position on immigration right now is more a manifestation of our lack of confidence as a country than anything else.”
—Jeff Immelt (MBA ’82), Chairman & CEO, GE
“We mustn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s a case of two cheers for capitalism. It may not be perfect, but we haven’t found anything that is better.”
—Sir Ronald Cohen (MBA ’69), Cofounder & former Chairman, Apax Partners L.P.
“There is no future for our country unless westop spending more than we earn. It’s very simple.”
—James Wolfensohn (MBA ’59), Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC
“The real strength of America is not its technical schools. What we don’t have in India, and what the world doesn’t understand the importance of, is the liberal arts. We need people who are right brain as well as left brain.”
—Anand Mahindra (MBA ’81), Vice Chairman & Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
“This notion of the golden parachute — I wish we could just voluntarily all agree we’re not going to do that anymore, because it doesn’t make any sense.”
—Michael Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor
“I think the American people are dying to be asked to help solve some of these problems.”
—Meg Whitman (MBA ’79), former President & CEO, eBay Inc.
“Fear caused by greed needed to be bailed out with $700 billion; fear caused by poverty and hunger needs to be bailed out too.”
—Yong Tao, Chairman, Strategic Decision Resources Group
“Executives who now make 350 times what the lowest worker in their firms make are behaving in an especially unbecoming way when they seek to explain that raising the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39 percent will end capitalism as we know it.”
—Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
“Herd behavior, greed, corruption, stupidity all played a role.”
—Robert Glauber (DBA ’65), Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
“There will be more miles of highway in China by next year than in all of the United States.”
—Victor Fung (Ph.D. ’71), Group Chairman, Li & Fung Group
“Brands need to learn to market with two ears and one mouth.”
—David Kenny (MBA ’86), Managing Partner, VivaKi
“In the 1980s, we told our companies, ‘Don’t focus on international.’…Now the question we ask in seed financing is, ‘What is your strategy for going global?’ ”
—Robert Higgins (MBA ’70), Senior Lecturer, HBS; Founder, Highland Capital Partners
“Advice, help, experience — you have it to give. You don’t have to have money to be involved in the nonprofit sector. Maybe you’re better off without it.”
— John Whitehead (MBA 11/’47), Chairman, AEA Investors, Inc.; Founder, HBS Social Enterprise Initiative
“Focus has always been Job One in my success. Globalization goes against that. International operations can create a real lack of focus if you’re not careful.”
—Donna Dubinsky (MBA ’81), CEO & Cofounder, Numenta, Inc.
“Given how instantaneously information moves, regulators can never possibly move fast enough to create real change.”
—Jim Breyer (MBA ’87), Partner, Accel Partners
“If you have fifty scientists, you don’t need 150 projects. Most labs are working on way too many things.”
—Kim B. Clark, President, Brigham Young University–Idaho; former Dean, Harvard Business School
“Today, 21st-century medical technology is delivered with 19th-century organizational structures, management practices, and pricing models.”
—Michael Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor
“The snowball is rolling. We are seeing that change can happen at the school level. Now the challenge is at the system level.”
—Wendy Kopp, CEO & Founder, Teach For America
“The mix of government and private industry responsibility really depends on the country. In some cases the private sector must lead, in others the government has more power.”
—Nancy Barry (MBA ’75), President, Nancy Barry Associates–Enterprise Solutions to Poverty
“The iPhone changed everything by bringing the Web to your handheld. The next frontier will be your TV — that’s the next big two-way device.”
—Eric Kim (MBA ’81), Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Home Group, Intel Corporation
