Quote of the Day – 10-Apr-07

A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the “sports” model of some production car to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile. You know how they did it? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it look fast.Business is broken the same way that car was. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive.

…In big companies there’s always going to be more politics, and less scope for individual decisions. But seeing what startups are really like will at least show other organizations what to aim for. The time may soon be coming when instead of startups trying to seem more corporate, corporations will try to seem more like startups. That would be a good thing.

– Paul Graham – Foreword of “Founders at Work”