Johnson

"The key, per the team’s attorney, was banking venture capital money—and squaring circles later. “When approached with the conundrum that we have in terms of the desire not to misrepresent ourselves to potential venture capitalists, [Johnson’s reply] was ‘The deer is almost in the box. Don’t spook the deer. Business plans change all the time,’ ” one early X.com employee remembered."

"Johnson said of the Devil’s Causeway: “Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.”"

"The key, per the team’s attorney, was banking venture capital money—and squaring circles later. “When approached with the conundrum that we have in terms of the desire not to misrepresent ourselves to potential venture capitalists, [Johnson’s reply] was ‘The deer is almost in the box. Don’t spook the deer. Business plans change all the time,’ ” one early X.com employee remembered."

"At the turn between the 1960s and 1970s, Asea, L.M. Ericsson, Volvo, Skånska Cementgjuteriet, and Rederi AB Nordstjernan were the five largest companies in Sweden. In Hermansson’s book, the fifteen original families were named Wallenberg, Söderberg, Wehtje, Johnson, Bonnier, Kempe, Klingspor, Jeansson, Dunker, Broström, Schwartz, Hammarskiöld, Jacobsson, Åselius, and Throne-Holst."

"In Italy, Del Vecchio also expands into production by acquiring Sferoflex of Rovereto, a historic competitor, the first components he had worked on as an engraver at Johnson in the late 1940s. Sferoflex, grappling with a lack of succession, owns one of the most important patents of the sector, that of the elastic hinge for temples. At the beginning of 1981, Del Vecchio buys the Trentino company – which allows him to also overcome accusations of copying their patents – discovering how much his Luxottica is more advanced than competitors."

"He started climbing it as the last of the Sherpas more than seventy years earlier, when they handed him the first glasses to engrave at Johnson."

"In 1949 he gets on a bicycle and every morning crosses the city to work at Johnson, which has been making medals in Porta Nuova for over a century. In the evening, he specializes at the Brera Academy, where the owner gives him the chance to grow, to refine his own drawing skills. Leonardo is in a hurry to move on. The rest is history: that of the orphan who for years becomes Italy's top taxpayer, only to later choose Monaco for residence and Luxembourg as the fiscal seat for his holding."

"At Johnson, Del Vecchio studies how to make molds for medals. He is the last arrival of eight workers, the young apprentice who can be asked anything. His colleagues send him to buy lunch every day. "But not for me," he recalls in an interview with Ferruccio de Bortoli in Corriere della Sera. "At that time I could not afford bread with mortadella and every morning my mother would prepare a 'schiscetta' with boiled cabbage: it was my lunch for years." The smell was unmistakable. There were no refrigerators, and the cabbage would ferment in the schiscetta until lunchtime."