Nearly four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare’s relevance remains as fresh today as when he first penned his work.  He has held up his mirror of truth to love, marriage and death; to politics, money and murder; and to family, betrayal and madness.

His insight, both great and timeless, provides us in the world of business with many-a-lesson too.

Here are my 15 favourites (collated over some time):

1. To entrepreneurism:
“Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”
Twelfth Night

2. To versatility:
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; And one man in his time plays many parts.”
As You Like It

3. To intelligence and discretion:
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice”
Hamlet

4. To time-building and leadership:
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”
Henry V

5. To timing and strategy:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men.Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”
Julius Caesar

6. To making your own luck:
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,Which we ascribe to Heaven.”
All’s Well That Ends Well

7. To post action review:
“Whereof what’s past is prologue; what to come,In yours and my discharge.”
The Tempest

8. To avoiding “yes men”:
“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, And falls on th’other. . . .”
Macbeth

9. To effective communication:
“brevity is the soul of wit”
Hamlet

10. To triumphing from failure:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity”
As You Like It

11. To holding firm:
“I’ll answer him by law. I’ll not budge an inch”
The Taming of the Shrew

12. To avoiding corporate/technical bullshit:
“We work by wit, not by witchcraft”
Othello

13. To walking-the-walk:
“The force of his own merit makes his way”
Henry VIII

14.  To loving what you do:
“To business that we love we rise betime and go to it with delight”
Anthony and Cleopatra

15.  To taking time to get it right first time:
“Too swift arrives as slow as too tardy”
Romeo and Juliet