Quotes About Innovation

The first thing one must remember about film is that it is a young medium. And it is essential for every responsible artist to cultivate the ground that has been left fallow.

When you think of technology that gets people excited - long lines at stores, enthusiastic reviews in the blogosphere, passionate evangelists - the first thing to come to mind probably isn't thermostats. Then, along came Nest.

What does an entrepreneur do? The first thing is they've given themselves permission to see a problem. Most people don't want to see problems... Once you see a problem and you keep looking at it, you'll find an answer.

The best way to make change is to know how something works. If you're going to go build something or change whatever it is, if you don't know how it works and you're trying to go make a change in it, the first thing you're doing is you're spending time figuring out how it works. The same thing happens in organizations.

The first thing I look at is, 'Is the entrepreneur going after really big problems, to the extent that it feels scary when they talk about it?' You wonder if the idea is possible. I have seen that a lot of times, people go after small problems, and that's a sign that they are not confident.

The first thing you learn about the music business is that it changes very quickly. You come into it at a certain point and you think you have a handle on it... And then, three years later, the whole thing has been turned upside-down.

Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket.

I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of entrepreneurship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas.

In summer of 2008, I meet a guy named Michael Seibel. And Michael Seibel says, 'There are these people called angels, and they'll give you money.' The first thing I thought is, 'I can't believe this guy believes in angels.' That's how naive I was.

If I see something that seems out of sync with what's already known, the first thing I do is try to find out what's wrong with the data. Once you've done that, and it still seems wrong, that's when things get interesting. It means you've found something new to understand.

The first thing to know about space food - it is the ambiance; it is the environment. It is not the food.

The best sequels throughout time keep what you really like about the first thing, but they aren't afraid to do their own thing for the next season and kind of grow, in a way.

As far as the NWA tag-team wrestling of the '80s - and I know you're talking some heavy hitters there - the first thing people will always say is The Midnight and Rock 'N' Roll Express. We invented things as we went along that people had never seen. It was always different. And it was always good.

Marc Lore has been a mentor of mine for a long time. He taught me how to hire people and how to do the hardest thing in business, which is to make a great culture. I believe Marc is the most innovative and ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur on the planet.

The hardest thing is the idea. Ideas come from somewhere but as far as we know they come from nowhere.

I've often heard people say that managing creative people is the hardest thing in the world. 'They're never happy, they drive up the cost of things, blah blah blah.' I just manage people the way I always wanted to be managed. That is, to be creatively challenged, but never to be told what to do.

You go to any Jay-Z concert, and he plays his hits. Comedians don't have hits. You have to have a whole brand-new hour. You have no hits to rely on. It's the hardest thing.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to take something everyone already knows and make it a little better.

The hardest thing to coach is scoring goals and creativity.

A general charge of crony capitalism is easy to make. But dividing the 'bad' crony capitalists from the 'good' innovative entrepreneurs is much harder to do. And sorting them out without creating a new group of crony capitalists may be the hardest thing of all.

I think it's the hardest thing to remind yourself you have to do it the way you would do it. Because no one else is going to do it that way. If you don't do it, then no one else will - and the world won't see it.

I think repetition is the hardest thing to avoid with sequels, because you've told a story and now you're adding more story to the story.

The hardest thing to do in wrestling is that every time you show up, there's just a ring with three ropes, turnbuckles on each side, it's extremely hard to do something to surprise and shock the fans.

Human history in essence is the history of ideas.