Quotes about Innovation

I like to describe innovation through an old – yet relevant – joke. 

The story is of two men who are mountain-hiking when they stumble upon a hungry grizzly bear.  Immediately, one of the hikers takes off his backpack and hiking boots and proceeds to put on his running shoes. The other hiker looks at him and asks, “What are you doing?  You can’t outrun a bear!” The first hiker responds, “I know, but I only need to outrun you!”

Most organizations are at the “innovation as an event” level. They have brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas.

At a more sophisticated level, innovation can be part of a “process.” That is, the organization has a structure in place to define problems, generate/evaluate ideas, and develop action plans to implement those ideas. The result is a realistic deliverable based on an organizational problem. However, the problem with both of these levels is that innovation is reactionary and discrete. It occurs only when someone decides it is time to innovate.

Innovation is premised on force-feeding people more junk; on fuelling artificial needs for super-size meals, Hummers, and a new pair of sweatshop-produced fast-fashion jeans every weekend.

Sustainability, on the other hand, is premised on helping people finally step off that creaking treadmill of consumption.

Our reach is limited by our vision. Our vision is limited by our horizons and our horizons are set by our ambitions.
We can make our ambitions and goals come true, if we use innovation.

The next industrial revolution begins here. What happens when we think of using new DNA to reorganize structurally inefficient industries? A blueprint for the next industrial revolution emerges. Here’s what it looks like.

Organize the world's hunger.
Organize the world’s energy.
Organize the world’s thirst.
Organize the world's health.
Organize the world's freedom.
Organize the world's finance.
Organize the world's education.

That's not an exhaustive list - it's just a beginning. In fact, let's open source it: please add to it ("organize the world's xyz"), and we'll keep an index here or elsewhere.

What's important is the logic behind the list. Let's make that as razor-sharp as possible.

Organize: to transform DNA, not lower-value technology. The world's: to have a global impact; to be able to scale to global levels. Hunger, health: some measure of economic well-being: to radically change the world for the better.

If you're a startup, and your elevator pitch isn’t shaped by this blueprint; if you're an investor, and your portfolio isn't full of companies like this; if you’re a corporate boardroom, and you're not refocusing and restructuring to meet these new challenges – here’s the bottom line: the next industrial revolution has your name written all over it.

The revolution needs revolutionaries. Today’s investors, boardrooms and entrepreneurs are looking for value in all the wrong places. Facebook's game of musical chairs won't solve big economic problems - and neither will making token investments in greentech.

Where is the next industrial revolution crying out for revolutionaries? Simple: in industries dominated by clear, durable, structural barriers to efficiency and productivity.

There are huge shocks rolling across the global economic landscape. Here are just a few. Food prices are skyrocketing. The financial system is melting down. Energy, of course, is more and more toxic, and costly. We are all, make no mistake, dancing on the precipice of economic cataclysm.

It is the obligation of radical innovators to create new value by solving these problems - or cede capital and resources to those who can.

In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell.

Next time you are designing a process, a product, or a service, ask yourself, “What can I remove?” For most consumers, simplicity is more important than comprehensiveness (and complexity).

The concept of “taking away” is also a great time management technique.  In addition to your “to do” list, be sure to create a “don’t do” list.  Become masterful at killing products, eliminating non-value adding tasks, and removing old/pointless habits.

If you are crunching numbers, you are probably gathering information from existing customers. This will give you insight into their buying habits, usability behaviors, and other patterns. But most likely you are only gathering data on YOUR customers.  This represents the middle of the bell curve or the norm. This information may be useful in “incremental” improvement, but it will rarely lead to significant innovations.

I believe this country stands at a crossroads. For decades, innovation has been the engine of prosperity in this country. Now, economic progress depends more than ever on innovation. And the potential for technology innovation to improve lives has never been greater.... If we make the right choices, the United States can remain the global innovation leader that it is today.

These four policy prescriptions – strengthening educational opportunities, revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, and providing incentives for private-sector R&D – should in my view be top priorities as Congress and the Administration consider how to maintain the nation's leadership in science, technology, and innovation.

Take it a step further and look to non-business analogies and metaphors. If redesigning a product, ask what the product is really like. If redesigning a computer chip, look to racing circuits, rivers, or anything with a flow. A gas pipeline company developed a new technology for finding and sealing pipeline cracks by mirroring the clotting agents in the human body.

I hope corporations will dedicate a percentage of their top innovators' time to issues that could help people left out of the global economy. This kind of contribution is even more powerful than giving cash or offering employees' time off to volunteer. It is a focused use of what your company does best. It is a great form of creative capitalism, because it takes the brainpower and makes life better for the richest, and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else.

Too often, we try to fit in with the crowd. We play it safe. But innovation is about taking risks while being true to you. This takes confidence. And it takes the belief that your “style” is what the world needs and wants. Yes, taking this risk may help you stand out. More importantly, it may be the ticket to your success.

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders of those who would gain by the new ones.

The more you measure and motivate based on innovation, the less likely you will have a truly innovative culture.

Tools are great. But giving people tools, without first changing their mindset is useless.

People buy more weight loss books/diets (tools) than all other books, yet people are fatter than ever. Why? Most diets do not address the psychological reasons (mindset) for eating.

The same holds true for innovation.

Do not train your employees on creativity techniques or bring in innovation software until you have addressed your underlying cultural issues (the mindset).

Nearly 100% of innovation -- from business to politics -- is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.

Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

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.

Even though I took a pounding, rich dad was happy that I was learning to be a creative entrepreneur, rather than a competitive one. He said, "Some entrepreneurs win by creating. Other entrepreneurs win by copying and competing." He also said, "The riskiest of all types of entrepreneur is the creative entrepreneur, also known as an innovator."

"Why is the creative entrepreneur the riskiest type to be?" I asked. "Because being creative means you are often a pioneer. It is easy to copy a successful and proven product. It is also less risky. If you learn to innovate, create, or invent your way to success, you are an entrepreneur creating new value rather than an entrepreneur who wins by copying."

Those who see what's obvious aren't necessarily brighter than others.  They're just more likely to observe that the emperor is naked.  Like children, they see what's actually there.  Their perceptions are less clouded by belief systems, taboos, habits of thought.  One responsibility of management---an important one---is to call attention to the invisible obvious, pointing it out as a child does (sometimes to the embarrassment of adults).  Doing so also requires supporting employees who take that risk, too, and other risks as well.

The best ideas aren't hidden in shadowy recesses.  They're right in front of us, hidden in plain sight.  Innovation seldom depends on discovering obscure or subtle elements but in seeing the obvious with fresh eyes.  This is easier said than done because nothing is as hard to see as what's right before our eyes.  We overlook what we take for granted.  Billions of tea drinkers observed the force of steam escaping from water boiling in a kettle before James Watt realized that this vapor could be converted into energy.

We are only at the beginning of the development of the human race; of the development of the human mind, of intelligent life--we have years and years in the future.  It is our responsibility not to give the answer today as to what it is all about, to drive everybody down in that direction and to say: "This is a solution to it all."  Because we will be chained then to the limits of our present imagination.  We will only be able to do those things that we think today are the things to do.  Whereas, if we leave always some room for doubt, some room for discussion, and proceed in a way analogous to the sciences, then this difficulty will not arise.

To decide upon the answer is not scientific.  In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar---ajar only.

A strategy of rapid global growth requires a different culture than one of focused innovation, and there are a number of levers (including succession) that can be pulled to align the culture to the needs of the future strategy. Unfortunately, most organizations see their culture as an impediment to the implementation of their strategy; very few see it as a competitive advantage.

If you keep doing things like you've always done them, what you'll get is what you've already got.

  A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow. When innovations are in the exploration stage, they need a champion to take them through the rest of the developmental stages. Otherwise the bureaucracy, politics, and people who can only see the fledgling and potential innovation through today's glasses will smother it or let it quietly die from malnourishment.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.