Culture , Corruption and Bribery

"Today the US government is the only one in the world which legislates heavy penalties- fines and prison sentences- for any of its citizens caught bribing overseas officials, In contrast, many European countries not only condone such payments, they permit their companies to claim foreign bribes as a tax deduction.

Nevertheless, business people of any nationality have good reasons for avoiding the bribery trap:" ethics, Corporate ethics, expense, Local law.

Richard R. Gesteland, 2001, Cross Cultural Business Behaviour; marketing, negotiating and managing across cultures, 2^nd ed., Copenhagen: Copenhagen Bus. Sch. Press.
p. 91.

INNOVATION

‘An established company which in an age demanding innovation is not capable of innovation is doomed to decline and extinction. And a management which in such a period does not know how to manage innovation is incompetent and unequal to its task. Managing innovation will increasingly become especially top management, and a touchstone of its competence.’ PETER DRUCKER.

'There are costs and risks to a programme of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’ John F Kennedy.

Cowards die many times before their deaths

Caesar:  "Cowards die many time before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once." 

Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37)

Caesar's wife, Calpurnia, has had dreams in which her husband was murdered. At Caesar's request, the priests have sacrificed an animal which, upon being cut open, was discovered to have no heart. And so they sent word to Caesar that he should stay home on this fateful day, the ides of March, which the Soothsayer had already warned him about earlier in the play. Caesar muses, "What can be avoided /Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?"In other words, if the gods are predicting that he is going to die, then how will he get around it? He goes on to encourage his wife with the now-famous lines, finding it strange that men fear death so much, when death is inevitable in every man's life.