Christopher Tjajadi

“I want to discuss why a company exists in the first place. In other words, why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively that they could not accomplish separately—they make a contribution to society, a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental . . . You can look around [in the general business world and] see people who are interested in money and nothing else, but the underlying drives come largely from a desire to do something else: to make a product, to give a service—generally to do something which is of value.1”
― Michael E. Porter, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy

“The most important and undeniable trend of technological advancement has been toward higher living standards. That trend is likely to accelerate in unimaginable ways. Beyond that, computerization is changing the character of decision making, making it faster and less emotional. As helpful as that is, it also poses certain dangers.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.
Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin