Quotes from Marty Neumeier

New ideas capture and possess the mind that births them," said Robert Grudin in The Grace of Great Things. "They colonize it and renew its laws.

Sift through threats for hidden possibilities. Every threat carries with it the potential for innovation. The problem of obesity contains the possibility of new kinds of nutrition. The problem of global pollution contains the possibility of new energy sources. The problem of high unemployment contains the possibility of new educational models. The list is endless, if you can learn to see what's not there.

In developing talent, hard work trumps genetics.

your mind, not in your hand. It should get you out from the covers and into your projects as fast as possible. And it should reveal its deeper wisdom reading

The hallmark of innovation is surprise. No surprise, nothing new. Nothing new, no interest. No interest, no value. Therefore, creating surprise is a crucial step in creating value through innovation.

If you find it hard to describe your idea, don't fix your description. Fix your idea.

It now seems possible, even necessary, to reconnect art with science, synthesis with analysis, magic with logic.

When your goal is to describe a vision for the future, information is not enough. People are up to their necks in information. What they need is a way to imagine life after the change, and compare it with life today. That's why it's called a vision and not a plan.

A charismatic brand includes a dedication to aesthetics. Why? Because it's the language of feeling, and in a society that's information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.

We've been trained by Industrial Age marketers to believe anything good is already on the shelf.

Make a sketch, construct a model, or assemble a prototype. Then another. And another. With each attempt, you'll reveal new possibilities for innovation. Your mind will talk to your hands, and your hands will talk to your mind. This dialogue is called generative thinking, and it happens only when you're making something. It's the active ingredient of design.

If our rational brains were deprived of emotion, even the most banal decisions would become impossible.

When you shift your focus from getting grades to gaining understanding, you set yourself on the road to mastery. You begin learning how to learn.

flip side: its growing vulnerability. A failed launch, a

Constant addition without subtraction always make a mess.

Every brand is a running narrative, a story-in-progress whose hero is the customer. If at any point the story splits into two stories aimed at two different tribes, you then have two brands. To keep the narrative together, each new feature, extension, or product use must keep something from the original direction to preserve logical continuity.

Today's real competition doesn't come from other companies but from the extreme clutter of the marketplace.

If we wipe away some of the misconceptions about brand, we can make more room for its truths. Ready?

Narrativity is becoming less like a book andmore like a jigsaw puzzle that we put together by making connections and recognizing patterns.

What you need beyond that is a facile imagination and the skills to apply it, driven by a passionate will toward a focused goal.

We have an unfounded fear that machines will someday start thinking like humans. What we should really fear is that humans have already started thinking like machines.

Often the most resource-ful person is the one who has tried the most approaches, taken the most risks, failed the most times.

There's a growing recognition that the great advances of the future will come not from a single man or woman, but from the concentrated effort of a group. The operating principle today is, "None of us are as smart as all of us." Yet to activate the creativity of a group—whether it's a team, a company, a community, or a nation—we'll need to bring our best selves to the party.

The ability to subtract features is the rare gift of the true communicator.