Quotes About Innovation

Sometimes this high-tech world calls for low-tech solutions.

An original thought would crack your feeble skull like a thunderbolt, you craven vulture.

Soon a whole guild of low-priced shrine keepers around Europe named their own pope - Boldface the Relatively Shameless, Discount Pope of Prague. The price war was on [...] The Retail Pope would offer cheesy bacon toppings on the Host with communion and the Discount Pope would counter with topless nun night for midnight mass.

Evolution doesn't really have a destination. It's just dicking around with possibilities.

Out came an extraordinarily complex network of plastic, brass, and stainless-steel tubing, which in seconds Kona had assembled into what Quinn thought was either a very small and elegant linear particle accelerator or, more likely, the most complex bong ever constructed.

But anyone with the time and the inclination can acquire technical proficiency. To achieve greatness, though, that requires artistry. That requires imagination and thoughtfulness...

But I remember when I read The Way of Kings, there were two things that struck me, like from a technical standpoint—it felt like you tackled a fantasy world almost as if you were writing science fiction.

The best art always comes unbidden.

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult," he said, "but because it wishes to be art.

One winter night, at his home, while he was stirring up the logs in his fireplace, he muttered, "Computers are irrelevant." Building

In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design.

Part of the fascination," he said, "is just little boys who never grew up, playing with Erector sets. Engineers just don't lose that, and if you do lose it, you just can't be an engineer anymore.

On the contrary, a company was more likely to asphyxiate on its own success.

Executives might make the final decisions about what would be produced, but engineers would provide most of the ideas for new products. After all, engineers were the people who really knew the state of the art and who were therefore best equipped to prophesy changes in it.

Rasala had named the two new prototypes Tartis and Gallifrey, after the home planet and time machine of Dr. Who, the protagonist of a science fiction show on public TV.

In many cases, a small and daily growing computer company did not fall on hard times because people suddenly stopped wanting to buy its products. On the contrary, a company was more likely to asphyxiate on its own success.

Much of the engineering of computers takes place in silence, while engineers pace in hallways or sit alone and gaze at blank pages.

Paul is the model of what should be done. He's not a model for how it has to be done. Let's celebrate him. Let's make sure people are inspired by him. But we can't say anybody should or could be just like him. He added, Because if the poor have to wait for a lot of people like Paul to come along before they get good health care, they are totally fucked.

Often, they said, it is the most talented engineers who have the hardest time learning when to stop striving for perfection. West

There were Colorgraphics and Summagraphics; Altergo and C. Itoh; and Ball. "Hey, wait a minute. What's Ball doing here? Aren't they the mason jar people?" "Yeah, but they also make disk drives.

Above all, Rasala wanted around him engineers who took an interest in the entire computer, not just in the parts that they had designed.

There really was, as [Tom] West had often said, more to building a computer than designing and debugging a Central Processing Unit. Someone had to dream up its general outlines in the first place. Someone had to make sure the computer worked compatibly with the company's existing line of peripheral equipment. Someone had to set goals of cost and performance and see that they could be met. 278

You did not have to be the first company to produce the new kind of machine; sometimes, in fact, it was better not to be the first. But you had to produce yours before the new market really opened up and customers had made other marriages. For once they are lost, both old and prospective customers are often gone for good.

IBM and other mainframe companies spent more money selling their products and serving their customers than they did in actually building their machines.