John Kay

The modern cult of the heroic chief executive is at the root of the problem. Greater shareholder activism may help, but the most valuable restraint would be more effective checks and balances within the company itself.

The richest men are not the most materialistic. Nor has it ever been otherwise.

Like all business success, innovative success is based on matching capabilities to market.

All our experience of the development of information technology starts from what the customer might want rather than what the technology might do.

If you aim to create a dynamic, successful business, a state-owned utility is not the place to start.

A stance which is pro-business must be distinguished from a stance which is pro-market. In the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, that distinction has not been appreciated well enough.

Maintain a clear sense of long-term objectives but acknowledge the limits on your day-to-day actions.

Regulation as supervision can be simultaneously extensive and intrusive, yet ineffective and prone to regulatory capture. History suggests that supervision is rarely a success.

Businesses are complex systems. We tend to infer design where there was only adaptation and improvisation, and to attribute successful business outcomes to the realisation of some deliberate plan.

If financial institutions are to survive, they must behave more like supermarkets