Hasso Plattner

Please, please, please, my dear competition. We can beat each other and fight each other as much as we want and argue, but do not predict how a system really works when you really don't know and don't want to know. Either be better informed, or don't do it.

Fans don't like owners. They know they are somewhere - actually, in Germany, some owners are anonymous. Fans don't sympathize with owners, so ownership stays in the back.

It's not good if owners of sports teams are talking to sports journalists, bypassing the manager. That goes in the wrong direction wherever it happens. Therefore, I'll refrain from doing this at all.

Kids only learn that the stove is hot when they put their finger on and they burn it. This, unfortunately, is the limitation of our precious brain.

You cannot make money with a hockey team. You cannot make money with a hotel, either, and you cannot make money with a golf club. I have all three of them. When you have a certain amount of money, you do silly things - because it's pretty to have a golf course and it's interesting to have a hockey team.

I'm not just a scientist.

We have to be able to adapt to new situation. It's another form of the definition of intelligent behavior.

Business reporting is not dealing with objects, it is dealing with relationships between objects.

Managers are important: they are leading the company and guiding and have to provide vision and manage the daily business.

Successful companies obviously have people with ideas and energy.

The software industry has to become better in componentization. That's a clear focus for most of the software companies. How components look, how they are maintained, the ability to maintain them separately.

At Stanford, we teach 'design thinking' - that is, we put together small, interdisciplinary groups to figure out what the true needs are and then to apply the art of engineering to serve them.