Innovation Quotes - Page 15

• NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.

  Burt Rutan

  Risk, Aversion, Way

  "After the X Prize". www.wired.com. December 01, 2004.

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• If you wait for customers to tell you that you need to do something, you're too late. Good business leaders should be half a step ahead of what customers want, i.e. they don't actually quite know they want it. That's what innovation's about. With Plan A, we didn't wait for the consumers to tell us.

  Stuart Rose

  Leader, Waiting, Steps

  "Sir Stuart Rose on the changing role of business leaders". www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2012.

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• It ain’t innovation unless something moves.

  Bob Allen

  Moving

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• Innovation happens because there are people out there doing and trying a lot of different things.

  Edward Felten

  People, Trying, Different

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• There is competition, .. Can any Microsoft endure future competition without innovation? The answer is no. We've got to keep changing.

  Bill Gates

  Competition, Microsoft, Answers

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• Creative people often feel highs of joy and lows of sorrow that others may never experience, and perhaps could not even handle if they did. Little wonder many outside the creative world mistake (or dismiss) eccentric responses of the spirit as weakness or mental illness. But in the end, these dismissive souls will never know what it is to be moved by tears by the beauty of rose or brought to joy by sunlight filtering through the leaves of spring or autumn. The creative walk in glades invisible to those outside their realms.

  Duncan Long

  Mistake, Spring, Creativity

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• I know the rewards of focusing on innovation and outcomes as opposed to hours. I've been fortunate to work with brilliant entrepreneurs who didn't have years of experience and yet they changed the world.

  Maynard Webb

  Years, Entrepreneur, World

  "Meritocracy: Overcoming the Fear Factor" by Maynard Webb, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 24, 2010.

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• The world needs a better understanding of how to encourage innovation. And innovators need to get better at it. Sign me up.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Understanding, Get Better, Needs

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• I saw that there are people who will connive against innovation. They're hostile to it. And that has shaped my behavior ever since.

  Robert Metcalfe

  People, Saws, Behavior

  "The Legend Of Bob Metcalfe" by Scott Kirsner, www.wired.com. November 01, 1998.

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• The rate of change and innovation occurring across the entire spectrum of society demands that a company like XL utilize the highest level of analytics and information to solve problems for our clients.

  Mike McGavick

  Levels, Demand, Information

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• A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

  Charles C. Mann

  Europe, Paper, Gunpowder

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• The trouble with innovation is that truly innovative ideas often look like bad ideas at the time.

  Ben Horowitz

  Ideas, Looks, Trouble

  "The Future of the Car Is Electric" by atrick Daniel, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 17, 2015.

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• Optimism is an essential ingredient for innovation.

  Robert Noyce

  Optimism, Essentials, Ingredients

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• Innovation means saying 'no' to a thousand things.

  Steve Jobs

  Mean, Saying No, Thousand

  "18 Innovation Lessons From Steve Jobs" by Thomas Oppong, alltopstartups.com. August 10, 2011.

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• It's like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there's some fundamental technology shift, it's just over.

  Steve Jobs

  Technology, Microsoft, Fundamentals

  Steve Jobs (0101). “Motivating Thoughts of Steve Jobs”, p.47, Prabhat Prakashan

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• When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation.

  Dan Pallotta

  "The way we think about charity is dead wrong". TED Talk, www.ted.com. March 2013.

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• Our industry is going through quite a wave of innovation and it's being powered by a phenomenon which is referred to as the cloud.

  Steve Ballmer

  Clouds, Wave, Phenomenon

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• It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.

  William Hazlitt

  Blessing, Past, Long

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1176, Delphi Classics

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• Innovation is very important to me, especially professionally. The alternative, standing pat, leads to complacency, rigidity and eventually failure.

  Georges St-Pierre

  Mma, Important, Alternatives

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• As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of innovation.

  Steven Johnson

  Eye, Ivory Tower, Towers

  "Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From". Interview with Kevin Kelly, www.wired.com. September 27, 2010.

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• All innovation is about letting go, saying goodbye to things to create space for the new.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Letting Go, Goodbye, Space

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• The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

  Simone Weil

  Struggle, Opponents, Defenders

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.166, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Wise, Prejudice, Vehemence

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.52, Booklassic

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• America has always been a country of innovation and dynamism, entrepreneurship. And I think that one of the things that has made our country great too is its heterogeneous population where people come here from all over the world.

  Jimmy Carter

  Country, Thinking, America

  "Big Think Interview With Jimmy Carter". Interview with Andrea Useem, bigthink.com. November 30, 2010.

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• What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e. putting ideas to work.

  Theodore Levitt

  Creativity, Ideas, Creating

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