Be An Innovator Quotes & Sayings

An innovator is one who does not know it cannot be done. — Raghunath Anant Mashelkar

Its entry on the scene was not generally peaceful. A flood of mistrust, sometimes of hatred, above all of moral indignation, regularly opposed itself to the first innovator. — Max Weber

I have to tell you that J.S. Bach was easily the greatest musical innovator in the history of the world. He was so advanced for his time. There's a spiritual depth to his music. You can listen to it and it's like meditation. — Brian Wilson

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist. — Neal Stephenson

As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas. — Max McKeown

It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about - figuring out the right product is the innovator's job, not the customer's job. — Ben Horowitz

I believe in being an innovator. — Walt Disney Company

George Harrison was a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous guitarist, and a wonderful example of what a rock star should be. I totally revered him as an innovator. He was always fresh, daring, magnificently melodic, full of spiritual quality, and totally conscious of the chord structure beneath the solo. And he had the courage to play simple. He never took refuge in effects, or tried to impress with speed. I hope he knew how much we all loved and respected him. — Brian May

You need to make a decision - are you are an imitator or an innovator? — Stewart Stafford

As a doctor, an educator, an innovator and someone who has dedicated his professional career to making things work better and to helping people - I am ready to lead. — Donald Berwick

Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huns and Jerome, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. — John Milton

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death. — Steven Pressfield

[Wynton] Marsalis does not aspire to be an innovator, no one else is allowed to have new ideas either. — Randy Sandke

The majority cannot reason; it has no judgement. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth. — Emma Goldman

They are always motivated to go up-market, and almost never motivated to defend the new or low-end markets that the disruptors find attractive. We call this phenomenon asymmetric motivation. It is the core of the innovator's dilemma, and the beginning of the innovator's solution. — Clayton M Christensen

Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer ... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable ... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of. — Malcolm Gladwell

You have to give credit where credit's due. Steve [Jobs] has been probably the single hardware/software forward-looking thinker and executor in our lifetime as an individual. He's quite a brilliant innovator. — Christopher Galvin

I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock 'n' roll! — Little Richard

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Sometimes we understand what is going on. But sometimes it is impossible to figure out why rising demand does not result in better performance. The innovator, therefore, need not always try to understand why things do not work as they should. He should ask instead: 'What would exploit this incongruity? What would convert it into an opportunity? What can be done?' Incongruity between economic realities is a call to action. Sometimes the action to be taken is rather obvious, even though the problem itself is quite obscure. And sometimes we understand the problem thoroughly and yet cannot figure out what to do about it. — Peter F. Drucker

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things ... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the wrong situations. — Clayton Christensen

[In 2011 on Steve Jobs] He was the most amazing person I have ever know. He was a genius. He was an innovator. He was the best client we ever had. He was my friend. — Lee Clow

What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. — Ludwig Von Mises

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition. — Thomas S. Kuhn

True originator, innovator and creator,
Thinkin' independent but I'm sayin' something major. — One Be Lo

I have never been an innovator, a creative genius. — Lawrence Welk

If you want to be an innovator, you have to take risks. And sometimes things work and sometimes they don't work ... — Christopher Galvin

There is no greater goal than to truly improve Mr and Ms Everyone's health, as an innovator that is where I want to spend my energy. — Philippe Kahn

Very few charter schools are being created in some of the best school districts in the state. If you're an educational innovator, that isn't where the greatest need is. — John Engler

The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone. — Stanley Crouch

I believe that life-saving, essential drugs should be freely available and the innovator should be paid a suitable royalty payment for his invention. — Yusuf Hamied

An innovator sees things not as they are, but as they could be. — Debasish Mridha

We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. — Niccolo Machiavelli

You can't exceed the system with language. You can only exceed the system with events; recommended procedures that are better. You can't exceed the system by telling people to be good, be kind, be considerate ... You have to take away the conditions that makes it necessary for you to be kind. And to be kind, you design highways that aren't slippery; where no accidents, or less accidents, occur. In the future, everybody becomes an innovator - a creator. — Jacque Fresco

It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed. — Ferran Adria

Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at no cost - ideas are generally difficult to communicate, and the resources for doing so are limited. It is rather ironic that a group of economists, who are also college professors and earn a substantial living teaching old ideas because their transmission is neither simple nor cheap, would argue otherwise in their scientific work. Most of the times imitation requires effort and, what is more important, imitation requires purchasing either some products or some teaching services from the original innovator, meaning that most spillovers are priced. — Michele Boldrin

To be an innovator, you can't be worried about making mistakes. — Julius Erving

In order to win over Paris and appear, in the eyes of all Europe, an absolute innovator, the most advanced of all, I urge you to get to work with all your heart, resolute on being bolder, crazier, more advanced, surprising, eccentric, incomprehensible, and grotesque than anybody else in music. I urge you to be a madman. — Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

The idealist and dreamer will stubbornly go down with the ship. The serial innovator grabs the rudder and changes course. — Larry Osborne

More than money, talent, or your number of contacts, your capacity to create mutuality with others can transform you into a sought-after Opportunity Maker with whom people most want to align. Be the glue that sticks the right teams together to solve problems or seize opportunities sooner and better together. — Kare Anderson

The final outcome cannot be known, either to the originator of a new theory, or to his colleagues and critics, who are bent on falsifying it. Thus, the scientific innovator may feel all the more lonely and uncertain. — Peter D. Mitchell

So, it's a very, you know - maybe we're wrong in - you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who's first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field. — Malcolm Gladwell

Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind. — Max McKeown

What's the DNA of a marketer? We call it the 4-I's: instigator, implementer, innovator, and integrator. — Beth Comstock

He was an innovator, an experimenter, a missionary in bringing the gospel of good cooking to the home table. — Craig Claiborne

The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions. — Anthony Bourdain

Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator — Ludwig Von Mises

Existing businesses aspiring to become adaptive corporations need to commit to understanding what exactly an adaptive innovator is and how that differs from both systemic designers and knowledge workers. In the end, they will actually need conscious planning to move them from a decades-imbedded orientation of knowledge work, to a new mindset of continuous adaptive innovation centered on the customer. — John Sculley

The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. — Margaret Bourke-White

Take note of the fact that I am a follower (of the religion) and not an innovator. — Uthman Ibn Affan

Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the "Innovator's Dilemma": the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer. — Lawrence Lessig

Superior execution is vital to sustaining the success initiated by an innovative service concept. An innovator's service quality is usually more difficult to imitate than its service concept. This is because quality service comes from inspired leadership throughout an organization, a customer-minded corporate culture, excellent service-system design, the effective use of information and technology, and other factors that develop slowly in a company, if at all. — Leonard L. Berry

Ray Johnson was a great innovator of mail art and photocopying and sending people photocopies. — Leo Fitzpatrick

Lamm's system - dubbed the Baron Lamm Technique - worked well. From 1919 to 1930 it brought Lamm hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks around the country; after his death it was taught to John Dillinger, among others.* Lamm's system, still employed today succeeded not only because of its conceptual strength but also because Lamm was able to communicate his ideas and translate them into the seamless performance of an immensely difficult task. He was an innovator who taught with discipline and exactitude. He inspired through information. In short, Baron Lamm was a master coach. — Daniel Coyle

I am very proud to align myself with Miken - a brand known as an innovator and leader in the development of high performance sports equipment. — Brett Hull

Aaliyah revolutionized what it was to be a young black woman in America. She made it OK to be a nerd and to be a tomboy. She made it OK to wear leather and chains. She was the first black girl with an ombre. She was so far ahead of everything and everyone. It was just who she was. She was an innovator, but she didn't even realize it. — Alexandra Shipp

Kildall, the innovator, followed his passion for technical excellence and was shocked that IBM wouldn't follow him. Gates, the imitator, took his cues from IBM every step of the way, because he believed that following Big Blue was the smartest way to follow the money. — Lewis Schiff

Texas has long been known as the nation's largest energy producer, but we are equally proud of our distinction as the nation's leading energy innovator. — Rick Perry

One of the most intensely unlikeable figures of the twentieth century, fanatical anti-Semite, enemy of labour unions and proud recipient of medals from Nazi Germany, where Hitler held him in veneration, Henry Ford was also an employer who paid his workers more than his competitors, an innovator who pioneered the assembly line and a visionary whose part in the creation of the twentieth century was so great that Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, prefigured a society whose calendar was divided into BF and AF-Before Ford and After Ford. — Stephen Fry

I guess I'd like to be known for being an innovator, fostering creativity, thinking outside the box. You know, keeping people playful. — Nolan Bushnell

But to an innovator, being early is not necessarily different from being wrong. — Jon Gertner

I'm discovering that the people that wake up early are really the trendsetters. They are up giving the commands on what the whole world needs to do so the worker wakes up at 8am but the dreamer, the innovator, the creator, the engineer is up at 3 or 4 in the morning making it happen. — Eric Thomas

It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm ... partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator. — Eric Temple Bell

[Kubrick] was unique in the sense that with each new film he redefined the medium and its possibilities. But he was more than just a technical innovator. Like all visionaries, he spoke the truth. And no matter how comfortable we think we are with the truth, it always comes as a profound shock when we're forced to meet it face-to-face. — Martin Scorsese

The innovator's dilemma: Should we invest to protect the least profitable end of our business, so that we can retain our least loyal, most price-sensitive customers? Or should we invest to strengthen our position in the most profitable tiers of our business, with customers who reward us with premium prices for better products? — Clayton M Christensen

Passion for equality blinds the utopian to the fact that society, as a whole, is based on inequality of men in two respects: the inventor, the innovator, the exceptional man creates something new and insures continuous progress; the others emulate his work or merely improve their own lot by benefiting from his creativity. — Thomas Steven Molnar

Digital hub (center of our universe) is moving from PC to cloud - PC now just another client alongside iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, ... - Apple is in danger of hanging on to old paradigm too long (innovator's dilemma) - Google and Microsoft are further along on the technology, but haven't quite figured it out yet - tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem — Steve Jobs

It ought to be remembered that 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. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. — Niccolo Machiavelli