Someone who really understands the big picture

Life’s Wisdom
P55, You can’t jump to the end game right away, in computer, politics, love, or any other aspect of life.
P66, Strive and thrive
P72, By the time they were figuring out what we were doing, we’d already done it.
P78, Strategically, it made sense.
P96, Ignorance and arrogance are a deadly combination.
P167, Growth makes us a moving target; No growth makes us a sitting duck.
P178, Numbers lie, and liars use numbers.
P183, Competition’s great. Every morning when we get up, we relish the day’s upcoming battles. They keep us alive. We can’t wait for tomorrow.
P198, Some trends, however, are so certain, they are coming no matter what.
P211, The one constant in life, however, is the clock.
P216, I’ve always valued practice. Repetition builds instinct. I’m living proof.
P219, Why fly. I like it when you have to do what you say you’re going to do.
P225, Work hard. Share. Be lucky. Then couple that with absolute honesty. Times invested, interpersonal skills, and plain old-fashioned luck.

On Success
P190, Some think computer expertise is required for future success. I don’t. Thinking and interpersonal communications skills have been, are, and will be keys to survival. Technology’s not going to change that. To prosper, work on your people-to-people relations more than your typing speed.
P193, You’ll need courses in logic, not word processing 101. The great advance in product technology is coming from a new internal complexity that will give greater external simplicity and utility… Being well-rounded, inquisitive, perspective, logical, and communicative is more valuable than knowing a given sequence of buttons to push. In the future, technical details will matter less -- big picture, more.

Humor
P55, I think we ran one function and the computer crashed. It didn’t matter. IIt was the principle that we had delivered something on time (close to), something that worked (sort of), a machine that would be useful (somewhat). [lol, when narrating the delivery of first Bloomberg terminal]
P77, “What does it really take to get into the newswire business?” - “Five reporters in Tokyo, five in London, and five in New York.” … (Today, we have five hundred in seventy bureaus worldwide. So much for Matt’s planning abilities.) [Starting the Bloomberg news business with Matt]
P161, I believe my design instinct, sales savvy, and management skills are the best around. Still, my ego does allow for the remote possibility that someone might be as good at one or two things. I’ve admitted there’s a slim chance that ideas coming from others could be valuable as well. [lol… this is so Jewish]
P165, And God forbid one of our people go to work for a competitor, then we all heartily and cordially really do hope they fail.

On Technology and Information Industry
P105, To us, presentation is important: Substance is paramount… Substituting “how” for “what is a strategy many adopt, but that’s not Bloomberg's plan...Media distribution is constantly changing.
P110, Limited supply and great demand equal high prices. The old economist Adam Smith did know what he was talking about. [The fundamentals] Distribution changes rapidly. Content evolves slowly with cultural advancement.
P121, “sequentially accessed” and “randomly accessed” [talking about the difference between newspaper and TV/radio. This is a core difference that I haven’t ever thought of. It’s simply put but makes great sense]
P131, two things haven’t changed in twenty years or twenty centuries: the need for information, and the users of data, with their bravery, jealousy, adventurousness, and fear of the new [the beauty of my future field, information science, in understanding information generation, structure, distribution, selection, processing, curation, storage and retrieval, and the use of technology in changing all these]
P156, The acceptance of technological consumer products depends more on their ability to surreptitiously invade our lives than on their whiz-bang utility.
P157, We are all humans, and technology exists to serve us, not the reverse. The challenge is to resolve people issues, not software ones.[Bloomberg understands the technology so well]