Quotes & Sayings About Incrementalism

Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away.
The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end. — Louis Sachar

It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. — Eric Schmidt

Unwavering incremental change can create remarkable and monumental results. — Ryan Lilly

It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward. — Louis Sachar

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples. — Mother Teresa

And now, I'm just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time. — Lady Gaga

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you. — Mother Teresa

Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there's a cliff on the route. — Seth Godin

Incrementalism is innovation's worst enemy. — Nicholas Negroponte

Patience is not waiting; it is a quality of waiting. — Sharon Weil

Freedom has more often been lost in small steps by progressive incrementalism, than it has been by catastrophic upheavals such as violence or war. — James Madison

We've reached the end of incrementalism. Only those companies that are capable of creating industry revolutions will prosper in the new economy. — Gary Hamel

Socialism preceded Marxism, and socialism has survived Marxism, in part because Marxism was subjected to a real-world test for nearly a century and failed on an epic scale. Soviet revolutionaries did not engage in Fabian incrementalism; they got their country and their empire and their worldwide movement, and they worked their will without opposition. — Jonah Goldberg

Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you — David Nicholls

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. — Confucius

Incrementalism can lead to local maxima. Be willing to explore to find the big wins before testing smaller changes and tweaks. Conversely, sometimes it's the incremental refinements that prove or disprove your hypotheses about what your users respond to. Use the insights from small tests to guide and inform your thinking about bigger changes. Consider entirely new alternative approaches to your principal business goals. Be willing to go beyond just testing "variations on a theme" - you might be surprised. If you're working on a major site redesign or overhaul, don't wait until the new design is live to A/B test it. A/B test the redesign itself. — Dan Siroker

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism. — Paul Keating

Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts, ... Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape. — C.S. Lewis

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. — Winston S. Churchill

The universal methodology of the tyrant is always incrementalism. — Derek R. Audette

we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism. — Peter Thiel

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. — Robert F. Kennedy

incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, — Eric Schmidt

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. — Edmund Burke

Over time I've learned, surprisingly, that it's tremendously hard to get teams to be super ambitious. It turns out most people haven't been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what's actually possible. It's why we've put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have big enough dreams, you'll usually get there. And even if you fail, you'll probably learn something important. It's also true that many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, with a few incremental changes. This kind of incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. — Eric Schmidt

Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. — Desmond Tutu

Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics. — Kenneth D. Wald