Quotes & Sayings About Innovation

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's hard to eat spaghetti. — David Allen

Because there was no pre-existing patrician elite, those successful in the new book industry could write very swiftly to the top of the social hierarchy. — Andrew Pettegree

There's no good idea that cannot be improved on. — Michael Eisner

Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism. — Oscar Wilde

America became a great nation early on not because it was flooded with politicians, but because it was flooded with people who understood the value of personal responsibility, hard work, creativity, innovation, and that's what will get us on the right track now, as well. — Benjamin Carson

I'm supporting the School for Creative Startups because the project's ambition - to boost innovation and the culture of entrepreneurship - is something I feel strongly about. — Natalie Massenet

Cookie cutters are for baking, not branding. — David Brier

Innovation doesn't come from the big company. It never has and never will. Innovation is something new that looks crazy at first glance. It comes from the 19-year-olds and the start-ups that no one's heard of. — Marc Andreessen

One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit like Bob Willis' bat with the "flow-through holes"; Saint Peter batting mitts are surely overdue a revival. The only genuinely intriguing step this year, bringing the IPL to YouTube, was forced on Modi by the collapse of Setanta; otherwise what Modi presents as 'innovation' is merely expansion by another name, in the number of franchises and the number of games. — Gideon Haigh

The Luddites ... asserted the precedence of community needs over technological innovation and monetary profit; ... The victory of industrialism over Luddism was overwhelming and unconditional; it was undoubtedly the most complete, significant, and lasting victory of modern times. ... To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community -- or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends -- you will be calle4d a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. ... Technological determinism has triumphed. — Wendell Berry

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form. — Watts Humphrey

For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong. — Scott Berkun

Knock-offs may look good, but they never last as long as the real thing. — N.M. Silber

If you find it difficult to accept failure then you simply won't get any innovation because employees will be too frightened — Terry Leahy

Unshackled by strict yet arbitrary, misguided norms, outcasts can be, look, act, and associate however they want. And in this ever conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society, the innovation, courage, and differences of the cafeteria fringe are vital to America's culture and progress. Which is why we must celebrate them. — Alexandra Robbins

Like patents - which also seek to protect the little guy - unions were started for all the right reasons. But like patents, they can be twisted into something that hurts innovation, competition, and ultimately consumers and the country as a whole. — Sarah Lacy

An enemy of innovation could be your own sales force. — Akio Morita

Innovation makes the world go round. It brings prosperity and freedom. — Robert Metcalfe

Delphine Lucielle's paintings are profound, unique, and moving. It is rare to find contemporary art that combines both beauty, innovation, and creates a new style of painting by fusing technology and nature. Delphine Lucielle is pushing the boundaries of what art is capable of. — Jerry Yang

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, arguably President Obama's best Cabinet appointment, has been leading a quiet revolution in clean-energy technology. Innovation is transforming this industry, costs are plummeting and entrepreneurs are devising radical new systems that create American jobs - in addition to protecting the planet. — David Ignatius

To start with, pharma was an industry based on innovation, drug discovery. — Kallam Anji Reddy

We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music. — Wynton Marsalis

Innovation can also increase risk, new things always do; therefore the engineering teams must understand that with freedom comes responsibility, ownership and accountability for the new stuff they produce and/or implement. — Anonymous

Even though effective competition is the best tool to strengthen innovation and competitiveness in Europe, state aid can also play a very useful supporting role, — Neelie Kroes

I believe Innovation is more likely to emerge from a culture of encouragement. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

In the U.S. and Europe, there has been a lot of creative hobby innovation, and that's great. — Erik Hersman

We need to find a way to safeguard humanity whilst still offering short-term financial incentives. For sure, we need innovators in finance more than we need innovation in technology. — David W. Wood

Innovation is the heart of humanity. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Failure isn't something to be embarassed about; it's just proof that you're pushing your limits, trying new things, daring to innovate. — Gavin Newsom

A big part of (Janice) Marturano's success in bringing mindfulness to this unlikely venue was that she talked about it not as a "spiritual" exercise but instead as something that made you a "better leader" and "more focused," and that enhanced your "creativity and innovation." She didn't even like the term "stress reduction." "For a lot of us," she said, "we think that having stress in our lives isn't a bad thing. It gives us an edge. — Dan Harris

Creativity has often been analogized as "Thinking outside of the box. — Pearl Zhu

As a traditionally risk-averse nation, India has rarely been at the forefront of innovation. Indian companies have mostly imitated others and became very good at it. — Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart's content. — Masaru Ibuka

One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of peoples walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo. — Nicholas Negroponte

Creative people in particular traditionally have strained relations with systems, structures, standards, and other perceived constraints on their creative freedom. Nowhere is this clearer than in big organizations where people often complain that "the systems" kill creativity, longingly thinking back to the halcyon days when the company was young and less bureaucratic. Going back to the unstructured start-up days is not an option, however. Established companies require a different kind of innovation: they need a culture in which creativity is part of the corporate ecosystem. The key to building a creative culture is not to declare war on systems, processes, and policies, but to embrace and redesign them so they support and actively enhance innovative behavior. Managers, in other words, have to fight systems with systems, creating an architecture of innovation in their teams and departments. The primary aim is to help people behave more like innovators. — Paddy Miller

While PANTONE 18-3224 Radiant Orchid, the captivating 2014 color of the year, encouraged creativity and innovation, Marsala enriches our mind, body and soul, exuding confidence and stability, — Leatrice Eiseman

It is common understanding that communication is at the heart of any organisation. So, why have organisational models not evolved accordingly? To truly leverage the potential of this information age, we need to rethink and redesign organisations — Miguel Reynolds Brandao

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation. — Max McKeown

Never despise the talents you have. It is by them that you will do something that has not yet come into existence until you were born. — Israelmore Ayivor

For the most part, the best opportunities now lie where your competitors have yet to establish themselves, not where they're already entrenched. Microsoft is struggling to adapt to that new reality. — Paul Allen

A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneurs job is to build the foundation — Brian Chesky

If he had gone to the old school, he was by no means old-school. — David Halberstam

The best leaders are apt to be found among those executives who have a strong component of unorthodoxy in their character. Instead of resisting innovation, they symbolize it. — David Ogilvy

We ought to open up energy innovation across the board and - and remove the barriers to every form of energy. — Ted Cruz

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

There has been so much recent talk of progress in the areas of curriculum innovation and textbook revision that few people outside the field of teaching understand how bad most of our elementary school materials still are. — Jonathan Kozol

Most people are afraid of what will happen when they go outside the lines. — K. Melissa Kennedy

We need a tax code that promotes savings, investment, achievement, innovation, and hard work. — Erik Paulsen

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

Authentic leaders inspire us to engage with each other in powerful dreams that make the impossible possible. We are called on to persevere despite failure and pursue a purpose beyond the paycheck. This is at the core of innovation. It requires aligning the dreams of each individual to the broader dream of the organization. — Henna Inam

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. — Theodore Levitt

An innovative mind allows "the creative flow" to open up for information abundance. — Pearl Zhu

It's the privilege of a lifetime for me to work with the most innovative people on Earth. Only Apple can deliver this kind of innovation in such a beautiful, integrated, and easy to use way. It's what we love to do, it's what we stand for. — Tim Cook

A creative mindset is in increasingly high demand: employers are vying for workers who are able to dream big and deliver big with the next must-have product. Creative thinking fuels innovation, it leads to new goods and services, creates jobs and delivers substantial economic rewards. — Jim Hunt

Crowdsourcing can greatly increase the number of ideas entering the front-end of the innovation funnel, however, using the wrong source can result in a large number of inappropriate ideas, and the lack of defined process for managing the progress of ideas through the funnel can result in the funnel becoming blocked. — D. James Kennedy

The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at. — Tyler Cowen

We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation. — Gary Hamel

Coffeehouses were centers of self-education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation, and, in some cases, political fermentation. But above all they were clearinghouses for news and gossip, linked by the circulation of customers, publications, and information from one establishment to the next. Collectively, Europe's coffeehouses functioned as the Internet of the Age of Reason. — Tom Standage

The paradox of innovation is this: CEO's often complain about lack of innovation, while workers often say leaders are hostile to new ideas. — Patrick Dixon

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast. — Peter Drucker

There's the famous quote that if you want to understand how animals live, you don't go to the zoo, you go to the jungle. The Future Lab has really pioneered that within Lego, and it hasn't been a theoretical exercise. It's been a real design-thinking approach to innovation, which we've learned an awful lot from. — Jorgen Vig Knudstorp

Part of the challenge of innovation is coming up with the problem to solve, not just its solution. — Scott Berkun

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it
perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole. — Will Durant

Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn't mean it cannot be managed. — Eric Ries

In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology. — Shimon Peres

Be creative, be innovative, consume what everyone consumes and make it fresh! — Kevin Focke

The pace of digital innovation is astonishing. It's impossible to imagine life without the web, smartphones, social networks. And yet the consumer products and everyday objects all around us are still essentially dumb. — Andy Hobsbawm

The cream of a generation was lost in the mud of Flanders. Etonians went over the top with the Illiad in their knapsacks and Athens in their hearts. To protest that such men were statistically not even a trace among the British soldiers killed is to miss the point. At all times the great majority of people have been ignorant of the classics; but the men who mattered; who governed, declared wars and resisted innovation have always had Latin and Greek. — William Donaldson

To most observers, innovation is a solitary process that requires creativity and genius, perhaps even greatness. It can't, in their view, be managed or predicted, just hoped for and, perhaps, facilitated. But for me innovation was and still is more than that. It was a battle in the marketplace between innovators or attackers trying to make money by changing the order of things, and defenders protecting their cash flow. — Richard J. Foster

Innovation doesn't care about anyone, — Gary Vaynerchuk

The conservative does not defend the Old Regime; he speaks on behalf of old regimes - in the family, the factory, the field. There, ordinary men, and sometimes women, get to play the part of little lords and ladies, supervising their underlings as if they all belong to a feudal estate . . . The task of this type of conservatism---democratic feudalism - -becomes clear: surround these old regimes with fences and gates, protect them from meddlesome intruders like the state or a social movement, while descanting on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future. — Corey Robin

You don't build it for yourself. You know what the people want and you build it for them. — Walt Disney

This is all about having great leaders who can drive agile innovation and agile decision-making. — Steve Ballmer

99 percent of success is built on failure. — Charles Kettering

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. — Elon Musk

If you have time to write a business plan, you have time to prove the model. Just sayin. — Richie Norton

Developing new products is labour- intensive. So is producing the capital goods needed to make them. These jobs disappear when innovation stalls. — Edmund Phelps

We need to get smarter about hardware and software innovation in order to get the most value from the emerging Internet of Things. — Henry Samueli

Outrageous behavior, also known as the lunatic fringe, is the seed bed of innovation and creativity. — Joel Salatin

Technological change is never an isolated phenomenon. This revolution takes place inside a complex ecosystem which comprises business, governmental and societal dimensions. To make a country fit for the new type of innovation-driven competition, the whole ecosystem has to be considered. — Klaus Schwab

The best innovation comes from inclusive work environments that foster diverse ideas, nurture people with diverse talent and backgrounds, and create strong relationships with diverse communities. — Mark Parker

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. — Abhijit Naskar

I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation ... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows. — Sam Altman

Think of managing change as an adventure. It tests your skills and abilities. It brings forth talent that may have been dormant. Change is also a training ground for leadership. When we think of leaders, we remember times of change, innovation, and conflict. Leadership is often about shaping a new way of life. To do that, you must advance change, take risks, and accept responsibility for making change happen. — Charles E. Rice

When I listen to music from different eras, I sense different things. The 1940s music, there's so much optimism and romance, maybe because they just solved the biggest problem on Earth at that time - World War II. In the 1960s, there was so much creativity and innovation in sound. — Eric Betzig

Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation. — Satya Nadella

In schools the main problem is not the absence of innovations but the presence of too many disconnected ... piecemeal, superficially adorned projects ... We are over our heads. — Michael Fullan

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise. — Mitt Romney

Innovation requires having at least three things: a great idea, the engineering talent to execute it, and the business savvy (plus deal-making moxie) to turn it into a successful product. — Walter Isaacson

Whether or not people go into space or serve the space industry, they will have the sensitivity to those fields necessary to stimulate unending innovation in the technological fields, and it's that innovation in the 21st century that will drive tomorrow's economies. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

It's important to remember something: California is not a state built on moderation. We invented motion pictures. We made an electric sports car. We're both the brain (Silicon Valley) and the heart (Hollywood, alas) of this great nation, and meanwhile we grow everyone's strawberries. We're open to innovation. We're open to new ideas. We're open to odd couples - and to strays from all parts of the world. Look at our last governor: an Austrian body builder and son of a Nazi married to John F. Kennedy's niece. Anything can happen. — Scott Hutchins

It is my purpose also to give the names and number and times of those who through love of innovation have run into the greatest errors, and, proclaiming themselves discoverers of knowledge falsely so-called [1 Timothy 6:20] have like fierce wolves unmercifully devastated the flock of Christ. — Eusebius

What is it we value? Innovation. Originality. Novelty. But most importantly ... timeliness. I fear you may be too late, my confused, unfortunate, friend. — Brandon Sanderson

I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too. — Jeffrey Tucker

The change in rhetoric has constituted a revolution in how people view themselves and how they view the middle class, the Bourgeois Revaluation. People have become tolerant of markets and innovation. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

Creativity is an input to innovation and change is the output from innovation. — Braden Kelley

Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal. — Sergey Brin

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Take No as a question. — Mechai Viravaidya

Widespread commercial distribution of ice was so new that 300 tons of the precious commodity melted at one port while customs officials tried to figure out how to classify it. — Bill Bryson