Business Intelligence

The numbers posted by Berkshire Hathaway have not come from some master plan we concocted in 1965. In a general way, we knew then what we hoped to accomplish but had no idea what specific opportunities might make it possible. Today, we remain similarly unstructured: Over time, we expect to improve our figures but have no road map to tell us how that will come about. We can expand the business into any areas we like — our scope is not circumscribed by history, structure or concept.

–Warren Buffett

We do have a few advantages, perhaps the greatest being that we don’t have a strategic plan. At Berkshire, we have no view of the future that dictates what business or industries we will enter. We prefer instead to focus on the economic characteristics of businesses that we wish to own and the personal characteristics of managers with whom we wish to associate — and then hope we get lucky in finding the two in combination.

–Warren Buffett