Join CIPE's Electronic Network Agenda Speeches Identifying international corporate strategies and forms of engagement. When I was a young man, I was in the New Zealand Navy, and they put me on kitchen duty. If you keep the potatoes going for long enough, eventually, they emerge perfectly spherical. They're very small pearls.
Some people believe in the center of every dirty brown potato there is a pearl.
A lot of the Middle European firms I deal with believe that in the center of every corporation there is a beautiful gem. You just cut off all the bad brown pieces around the edge and you are left with a profitable enterprise. Some of the executives I meet believe that that is called restructuring. It's called getting rid of people, and finding the little bit in the middle which you then milk. You could probably string it around your neck, if you wanted to.