Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

how important it is for the designer to work with the producer up front. This applies to every product.

The first precept of industrial design is that the function of an object should determine its design and materials.

Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over drafts and blue-prints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

sale to a loyal customer is worth six to eight times more to our bottom line than a sale to another customer.

My design chief and I finally had to agree that quality is absolutely objective and definable; otherwise, we would never even be able to establish our design criteria.

We are a product-driven company. That means the product comes first and the company exists to create and support our products.

The key to building a consensus for action is good communication.

The ship’s carpenter on Shackleton’s lifeboat the James Caird took only three simple hand tools with him on the passage from Antarctica to South Georgia Island, knowing that, if he needed to, he could build another boat with only those tools. I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology w

Again, like the Zen approach to archery or anything else, you identify the goal and then forget about it and concentrate on the process.