John Kay

Processes matter to us as well as outcomes, and so we genuinely appreciate gifts even if we don’t really care for the item.

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

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.

One lesson of recent events is that there seem to be no limits to the greed of the greedy. But perhaps the explanation is simply the one Madoff gave to the judge who sentenced him: “I made a mistake.”

Do not waste any time on sermons and the prohibition. Even if the Good Lord himself were to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, He would be ignored. Hardened gamblers only give up when they have made the resolution to quit themselves.

If you want a book on economics to take to the beach, you are spoiled for choice at the airport bookstall. What you will find falls into three categories: Thump books, microeconomics books with little economics and the macroeconomic story-teller.

If you want to understand how the City came to play such a central role in British economic and political life, why a crash was inevitable, and why the crisis is being resolved on terms which give so much and ask so little of the financial sector, this is the most important thing you need to understand: the influence of investment banks on modern politics and policy.

The Whiz Kids’ capacity for analysis far exceeded their knowledge of the world to which it was applied.

There is not, and never will be, an economic theory of everything. We should observe empirical regularities and we will often find pragmatic solutions that work even though our understanding of why they work is incomplete.

To choose appropriate models you need to understand both the maths and the business environment. Media industries and financial institutions have both been unsuccessful in marrying these two skills.