Quotes About Innovation

I started Knewton to do my bit to fix the world's education system.

When you have a deadline, or when you know that your equipment is about to go up in a rocket and you won't have another chance to fix it, your mind works in a way that it otherwise never would.

What's so great about DreamWorks is that it's run by filmmakers who believe that if it's not broke, don't fix it.

Fix a few things here, improve a few things there, launch a new feature every so often. That's coasting. And I don't want Basecamp to coast.

You want to encourage yourself to take risks. If you make a mistake trying to do something, you can fix it later.

I spent three years working at the White House and wanted to do something that wasn't about passing bills and resolutions.

Thank God for jazz. It gave black women what film and theater gave white women: a well-lighted space where they could play with roles and styles, conduct esthetic experiments and win money and praise.

A lot of white-collar work requires less of the routine, rule-based, what we might call algorithmic set of capabilities, and more of the harder-to-outsource, harder-to-automate, non-routine, creative, juristic - as the scholars call it - abilities.

For the longest time, computers have been associated with work. Mainframes were for the Army, government agencies, and then large companies. Workstations were for engineers and software programmers. PCs were initially for other white-collar jobs.

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.

The difference between me and other people in my generation is instead of saying the Internet's killing the record business, I say, 'Who cares about the record business, the Internet is enhancing music.'

Doing a me-too business, because it's you - the only person who cares about that is you. The market doesn't care if it's you. The market is pretty much being served. You better have something that the world doesn't have, because even then, you might screw it up through your own ineptitude and inexperience.

I'm rarely invited to start-up parties, but who cares about their trinkets and apps anyway?

Typically my ideas come to me in the most inane ways possible. I had the initial idea for 'Quantum Conundrum' while I was walking down the street to get breakfast. People are like, 'Whoa, what's your inspiration, is it something amazing?' No, I was just really hungry.

I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'

I want to make a movie where people are, like, 'Whoa.'

Whoever can surprise well must conquer.

Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.

I think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums, and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking, definitely lacking in music today.

Whoever heard of an electric violin, electric cello or, for that matter, an electric singer?

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.

There's so many people that follow the trend, and then it gets to a point where it gets a little stale. So, in music; I mean, whoever's the new trendsetter, that's who people follow.