Quotations

“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”

“It must be borne in mind that the object being worked on is going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some way used by people individualy or en masse.”

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem for which they are the solution.”

“The reason to have a design firm is to have lunch every day with interesting people”

“A design attitude views each project as an opportunity for invention that includes a questioning of basic assumptions and a resolve to leave the world a better place than we found it.”

“The 'Design Thinking' label is not a myth. It is a description of the application of well-tried design process to new challenges and opportunities, used by people from both design and non-design backgrounds. I welcome the recognition of the term and hope that its use continues to expand and be more universally understood, so that eventually every leader knows how to use design and design thinking for innovation and better results.”

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life and try not to bash into the walls too much…that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you…shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.”

"Innovation is a practice laying somewhere between science and art."

“The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.”

“To describe the problem is part of the solution.”

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”

“You can write the entire history of science in the last 50 years in terms of papers rejected by Science or Nature.”

“The myth of methodology, in short form, is the belief that a playbook exists for innovation and...it removes risk from the process of finding new ideas.”

“It’s often not until people try their own hands at innovation or entrepreneurship that they see past the romance and recognize the real challenges.”

“The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.”

“Many technologists think that advantageous innovations will sell themselves, that the obvious benefits of a new idea will be widely realized by potential adopters, and that the innovation will therefore diffuse rapidly. Unfortunately, this is very seldom the case. Most innovations in fact diffuse at a surprisingly slow rate.”

“Innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people’s concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you’re setting yourself up to fail.”

“Frustration with people in power is a perennial complaint among creative minds: Michelangelo and da Vinci were infuriated by their employers’ limited ambitions and their peers’ conservative natures, in the same way creative people are today.”

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back—Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

“By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves…we fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise.”

“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

“People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

“Collaborative innovation is a state of mind. A belief that none of us is as smart or capable as all of us."

"Design has no special subject matter of its own apart from what a designer conceives it to be."

"If you are not ashamed of your product when you launched, you launched too late"

“Most businesses organize for operation, not innovation.”

“You can’t Six Sigma your way to high-impact innovation.”

“If you can, be first. If you can’t be first, create a new category in which you can be first.”

“In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.”

“Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.”

“Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10.30 at night with a new idea, or because they realised something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”

“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologise than it is to get permission.”

“Many people still believe a better mousetrap is all it takes. But of the 2000+ mousetraps patented, only two have sold well, and they were both designed in the 19th century. A good idea doesn’t sell itself although most ‘lone inventors’ make the mistake of thinking it will.”

“Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.”

“A surprising number of innovations fail not because of some fatal technological flaw or because the market isn’t ready. They fail because responsibility to build these businesses is given to managers or organisations whose capabilities aren’t up to the task… Most often the very skills that propel an organisation to succeed in sustaining circumstances systematically bungle the best ideas for disruptive growth. An organisation’s capabilities become its disabilities when disruptive innovation is afoot.”

“It’s important not to overstate the benefits of ideas. Quite frankly, I know it’s kind of a romantic notion that you’re just going to have this one brilliant idea and then everything is going to be great. But the fact is that coming up with an idea is the least important part of creating something great. It has to be the right idea and have good taste, but the execution and delivery are what’s key.”

“If you think of [opportunity] in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.”

“Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.”

“The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.”

“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”

“The impossible is often the untried.”

“Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency. James Bond: And youth is no guarantee of innovation.”

“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

“A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

“What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.”

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”

“It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t.”

“Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.”

“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”

“Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.”

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries…and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”

“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

“Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.”

“The nature of an innovation is that it will arise at a fringe where it can afford to become prevalent enough to establish its usefulness without being overwhelmed by the inertia of the orthodox system.”

“One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.”

“You can't suppress creativity, you can't suppress innovation.”

“Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel the impact.”

“Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.”

“Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.”

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams.”

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”

“Never innovate to compete, innovate to change the rules of the game.”

“Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.”

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

“We owe our existence to innovation. We owe our prosperity to innovation… We owe our future to innovation… Innovation isn’t a fad – it’s the real deal. The only deal. Our future no less than our past depends on innovation.”

“Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”

“Driving a system to do more will not be enough if something different is needed.”

“Innovation — any new idea — by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.”

“Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.”

“Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.”

"One of the main reasons to build a prototype of your idea is that problems and solutions co-evolve. Building an approximation of what you think the solution is helps you understand what you didn't understand about the problem."

"The reason for the success of innovation consultancies lies in their ability to break paradigms rooted in organizational politics, traditions and financial incentives."

"A goal or decision without a deadline has no urgency. Ideas are great but there's nothing like a deadline to focus the mind."