Quotables

Photo by Steve Castillo

“It’s karma; it’s serendipity. Every time we make a decision to do good, it makes us more money.”

Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, an outdoor apparel company known for its “green” practices. Chouinard gave the 2006 Von Gugelberg Memorial Environmental Lecture in October. [Details]
Video File, 56:17 minutes

 

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Photo by Anne Knudsen

“We will have really arrived when someone suggests that Donald Trump travels with his own hairdresser. His hair is a lot more complicated than mine.”

Carly Fiorina, former chair and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, speaking at the GSB in October. Fiorina lamented that it is nearly impossible to describe her career without discussing the role gender has played. [Details]
Video File, 56:31 minutes
 

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Photo by Anne Knudsen

“The Google offer was very risky. I thought, ‘Maybe we could sell the company to Yahoo.’ It was a very low salary with all this equity.”

Omid Kordestani, MBA ’91, explaining why he nearly turned down the opportunity to be the first business-side employee at Google. A speaker in the School’s View from the Top series, he is now Google’s senior vice president of global sales and business development and is happy he took the equity. [Details]
Video File, 48:55 minutes
 

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“Silicon Valley startups are “temporary cults. Any time you isolate people, bind them together, and work them like dogs, it’s very powerful. You can get an enormous amount done when you create a place of such total focus and collective delusion.”

Professor Robert Sutton of the Stanford Engineering and Business Schools as told to the San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2006.
 

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Photo by Steve Castillo

“Our politics are divided, but I think our country is pretty united.”

Ken Mehlman, chair of the Republican National Committee, speaking in October at the Business School and arguing that new, high-tech media like the internet are to blame for creating a false impression of a deep political divide. [Details]
Video File, 25:45 minutes

 

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“Low-trust organizations are often much more political. People are watching what the powerful do and say and trying to mimic them. In high-trust organizations, you’ve got people debating the facts and disagreeing.”

Business School lecturer Joel Peterson, CEO of Peterson Partners, in the Salt Lake Tribune, Sept. 9, 2006.