Quotes About Innovation

The killer app is making calls,

David Brooks summarizes this reality more bluntly: "[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.

Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan out a whole project in advance," he writes, "they make a methodical series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning critical information from lots of little failures and from small but significant wins" [emphasis mine]. This rapid and frequent feedback, Sims argues, "allows them to find unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.

a New York Times column on the topic, David Brooks summarizes this reality more bluntly: "[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.

regularly read and understand the cutting-edge results in my field.

Every week, I expose myself to something new about my field. I can read a paper, attend a talk, or schedule a meeting. To ensure that I really understand the new idea, I require myself to add a summary, in my own words, to my growing "research bible

The professors at MIT—some of the most innovative technologists in the world—wanted nothing to do with an open-office-style workspace. They instead demanded the ability to close themselves off. This combination of soundproofed offices connected to large common areas yields a hub-and-spoke architecture of innovation in which both serendipitous encounter and isolated deep thinking are supported.

background-research process, which combines exposure to potentially relevant material with free-form re-combination of ideas, comes straight out of Steven Johnson's book, Where Good Ideas Come From,

According to Johnson, access to new ideas and to the "liquid networks" that facilitate their mixing and matching often provides the catalyst for breakthrough new ideas.

little bet, in the setting of mission exploration, has the following characteristics: It's a project small enough to be completed in less than a month. It forces you to create new value (e.g., master a new skill and produce new results that didn't exist before). It produces a concrete result that you can use to gather concrete feedback.

this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.

Day's innovation was to realize that his readers could become his product and the advertisers his customers. His goal became to sell as many minutes of his readers' attention as possible to the advertisers.

If you are working on a computer science programming assignment, schedule yourself to finish a week early so you can add a host of extra bells and whistles.

The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?

Others, such as Alan Lightman, or Erez Lieberman, who earned fame by the age of thirty-one through his combination of mathematics and cultural studies, or Esther Duflo, who won a MacArthur "Genius Grant" for her work evaluating anti-poverty programs, didn't make the cut for the book, but still weigh heavily on my thinking about how to best shape my own career. It

The country that manufactures nothing, ran the old saying in such towns, eventually becomes nothing;

It is characteristic of the unlearned that they are forever proposing something which is old, and because it has recently come to their own attention, supposing it to be new.

Wherever we look, the work of the chemist has raised the level of our civilization and has increased the productive capacity of our nation.

People who run a ready-to-wear company are businessmen rather than production or design people.

Imagination must constantly run on a new track or it becomes lifeless. A living imagination is essential to prayer.

To work entirely independent of others is art. To work creatively as a team, with a share of the work done privately, is design.

the bra she was wearing was of the very latest technology, with gel in the cups, which gave her bust a true-to-life movement. Splendid testimony to the advancement of science in the service of humanity.

Le Verrier —without leaving his study, without even looking at the sky—had found the unknown planet [Neptune] solely by mathematical calculation, and, as it were, touched it with the tip of his pen!

météorites, Le galvanisme, La circulation du sang, La vaccine, L'ondulation de la lumière, Le paratonnerre, Le daguerréotype, La vapeur, L'hélice, Les paquebots, Les chemins de fer, L'éclairage au gaz, Le magnétisme, Et le reste, À ceux, vivants et à naître, qui font de même Dans le présent, Et feront de même dans l'avenir.