Top 8 Rory Sutherland Quotes

Quite simply, the experience of adopting any new technology is the opposite of having children. Children are a massive pain to begin with, but 20 years later they finally become entertaining and useful; technology is often entertaining and useful to begin with, but 20 years later it becomes a massive pain.

I would argue that there is no objective perception of value whatsoever. Our valuation of something is internally constructed. It’s a product of internal perception and is, therefore, the product of mental processes which are highly influenced by context…Nothing is context-independent and, therefore, nothing can be completely marketing-free.

All Elon needs to do is create a solar-charged Tesla motorhome or trailer with a 200kWh battery, Starlink internet access and an incinerator toilet and this separation of house and land ownership becomes feasible. Woodlands, carparks, farms — all become potential residential land. You can deliver a home in a day, rather than months. You can manufacture them in the way we make cars, as Buckminster Fuller always intended. And you can move house without moving out of your house.

This is obviously biased, [but] I think financial and procurement entities are a bit dodgy. They can always claim the credit for a reduction in cost, but they never get blamed for a missed opportunity. Does that seem fair?

There’s always a trade off between short-term efficiency through exploiting what you already know, and long-term resilience and success through exploring what you don’t yet know or finding out what’s changed.

The greater value of digital to the wider organisation may be experimentation. It may be discovering things about human behaviour and preferences.

Most company mergers fail, so let's not be absolutely naive about the benefits of scale.

20% of bees...ignore the waggle dance. Their purpose is to have a high chance of a failed journey, but a small chance of a massive shareable upside.