Quotes About Innovation

O imitators, you slavish herd!

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

"Painters and poets," you say, "have always had an equal license in bold invention." We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.

Serendipity… you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of…. Now do you understand serendipity?

In science, mistakes always precede the truth.

Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.

Newspapers: dead trees with information smeared on them.

Lo que primero llamaba la atención era la ausencia total de muebles, lo cual era posible gracias a la utilización sistemática de pequeñas diferencias de nivel a la altura del suelo. De este modo, las zonas destinadas a dormitorios eran excavaciones rectangulares de cuarenta centímetros de profundidad: uno bajaba a la cama en vez de subirte a ella. Las bañeras eran igualmente grandes pilas redondas cuyo reborde estaba situado a ras de suelo.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Students of extraordinariness lack strong models that can be crisply tested.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas...

The story of the Copernican Revolution never has been and probably never will be better told than in Thomas Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (New York: MJF Books, 1985)

Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1926), is still in print eighty years after it was written. I

Forgetfulness is the catalytic germ of spontaneous creativity

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.

I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo.

Starbucks has always been about so much more than coffee. But without great coffee, we have no reason to exist.

The best ideas are those that create a new mind-set or sense a need before others do, and it takes an astute investor to recognize an idea that not only is ahead of its time but also has long-term prospects.

Living in the same city as Microsoft, I'm only too aware that, even in low-technology businesses like coffee, the Next Big Thing could knock the dominant player into second place tomorrow. I keep pushing to make sure that Starbucks thinks of the Next Big Thing before it has even crossed anybody else's mind. In fact, Don Valencia is working on it even as I'm writing this book.

Whatever you do, don't play it safe. Don't do things the way they've always been done. Don't try to fit the system. If you do what's expected of you, you will never accomplish more than others expect

They were about self-examination in the pursuit of excellence, and a willingness not to embrace the status quo. This is a cornerstone of my leadership philosophy.