I gained a humility that I needed in order to balance my audacity. I wanted to find the smartest people who would disagree with me to try to understand their perspective or to have them stress test my perspective. I wanted to make an idea meritocracy. In other words, not an autocracy in which I would lead and others would follow and not a democracy in which everybody's points of view were equally valued, but I wanted to have an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas would win out.
Akio Toyoda
President of Toyota Motor Corporation, 2009–2023; chairman from 2023
Even I can't predict what kind of car we will be driving 20 years from now, but my time at Babson taught me to embrace change rather than run from it, and I urge all of you to do the same.
Recorded
Babson College Graduate Commencement, Babson College (Babson Thought & Action), 21 May 2019
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Mellody Hobson
Co-chief executive and president of Ariel Investments
I told our Ariel team, we are not going to limp out of COVID. We're going to slingshot out of COVID. We're going to be pulling that rubber band back and back, and we're going to be warehousing ideas, and getting work done, and so when this is over we will pole vault ahead.
Recorded
Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024
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