Quotes About Innovation

I didn't like the way a wet cotton T-shirt felt under my equipment. There had to be something better.

If you ever decide to build a boat out of wet newspaper, it's important to remember to lay down the sheets like shingles on a house: One issue at a time, starting at the bow and moving aft, so water flows over the layers, not under them.

The phone started ringing when I dropped 'Whack World.'

Putting Zodiacs in front of whaling vessels doesn't do it anymore. Done that, been there, seen that.

I know what it felt like to walk into school and have kids say, 'Mr. Spangler's here!' And I thought, what if I gave that power to a parent so the kid looks at them and says, 'Dad, let's make a smoke ring launcher in the garage today.' What parent doesn't want to be a rock star?

One day, the people who work in my kitchen stir-fried chopped Napa cabbage to serve with some meat or fish for their own dinner. I got to thinking: 'What if the cabbage was the most important thing on the plate?'

Sitting still, a person produces about 100 watts of heat. What if you could use that to charge your cell phone?

What if someone created some sort of eyebrow pencil that was revolutionary and that was made specifically to help eyebrows look more realistic?

What if we treat the high-rise like a mountain, or we have gardens in the sky, or waterfalls? I think that's the most challenging thing I want to try in my architecture.

Don't wallow in brainstorming. Time spent fiddling with a business plan or filling up whiteboards with ideas is time that you could spend actually launching your business and seeing if the idea floats. Launching gives you real, solid feedback, instead of the imaginary 'what if' scenarios dreamed up in a conference room.

In the United States alone, 450 billion square feet of glass facade is produced every year. What if we could take this chance to use the glass to harness solar energy and allow the architecture to respond to the light and heat of the sun, to create photosynthesis and generate solar energy?

What if the Big Three automakers made products that were simple and easy to use - imagine a car with a user interface made by Apple - while also constantly trying to push the state of the art? What if they constantly sought out new technologies and ideas, and incorporated them into their products?

I want to be a Bond girl. Think about it - I have metal components in my legs, so when I go through airport security, I set off the alarms. But when they realize why I'm beeping, they let me through. What if I had weapons in my legs? I could take one off and pull out an Uzi! Legs Galore - that would be me!

What if people could use the Internet to create a new kind of money, one that didn't involve governments and central banks and could be used anonymously, like cash?

I always wanted to have a scenario where the guy didn't have my number, but I had his. What if women make the first move, send the first message? And if they don't, the match disappears after 24 hours, like in Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage? It'd be symbolic of a Sadie Hawkins dance - going after it, girls ask first.

I love the 'what if' nature of sci-fi.

The Jetsons had them in the 1960s. They were the defining element of 'Knight Rider' in the 1980s: cars that drive themselves. Self-driving cars appear in countless science fiction movies. By Hollywood standards, they are so normal we don't even notice them. But in real life, they still don't exist. What if you could buy one today?

What if you could radically alter the way stories get told? What if the way people wanted to consume content actually changed what you could make?

What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches?

Do we really need these big, gigantic, heavy rockets? What if we launch a rocket that's empty, and its sole purpose is to act as a source of fuel on the Moon? Who should build that? Well, I think the U.S. should build that.

I love J. G. Ballard. I love authors who take the world as we know it and just tweak one thing and say, 'What if the world were like this?'

In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, 'What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an '80s synth line or something from this record?'

I've always enjoyed shopping and loved fashion, but my interest as an entrepreneur was definitely more about the opportunities I saw to change the future of retail. My sister was a buyer in New York, and she knew my body and my style, and she could find me things I loved. I thought, 'What if everybody had access to this kind of experience?'

When you're surrounded by the world's leading social innovators, it's impossible not to be inspired by the energy and the 'what if' possibilities all around us.