Joel A. Barker Quotes

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

While it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge, the best science often emerges from situations where results carefully obtained do not fit within the accepted paradigms.

Exceptions are not always the proof of the old rule; they can also be the harbinger of a new one.

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

Every new theory encounters opposition and rejection at first. The adherents of the old, accepted doctrine object to the new theory, refuse it recognition, and declare it to be mistaken. Years, even decades, must pass before it succeeds in supplanting the old one. A new generation must grow up before its victory is decisive.

Remember: you cannot build a better mouse trap by fixing the old one - NewCo demands active ownership, and that activity is not the sum of doing multiple jobs but, instead, the sum of implementing paradigm-shifting changes that create new industries and solutions.

Culturally, I think we have operated as if we had the formula figured out, and it was all about optimizing, in its various constituent parts, the formula. Now it is about discovering the new formula.

Being a game changer to me means changing the way other people see things.

An experimental idea doesn't have to be separated from a mainstream context. The really exciting thing is where those two things are together. That's where you can get real change.

Carry a big basket. In other words, be open to new ideas, different partners, and new practices, and have a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches.

If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.

We want to challenge the established ideas with new ideas.

All it takes is one idea to solve an impossible problem.

Changing the game is a mindset.

Entrepreneurs almost always have to step out of existing institutions that embody old ways of doing things to build their vision.

What is Apple, after all? Apple is about people who think 'outside the box,' people who want to use computers to help them change the world, to help them create things that make a difference, and not just to get a job done.

It's always the organizations that are resource constrained that come up with the good ideas to win.

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.

People make basic assumptions based on what they have now. But you have to ask yourself, 'Is this really what people are going to be doing in five years?' Very few people ask themselves what they would actually want instead if they could wave a magic wand.

I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer.

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'

You don't want to just do 'me too' companies that are copying what others are doing.

Science has not solved problems, only shifted the points of problems.

There is some truth to the idea that, in the fields of science, individual contributions of great significance are possible.

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.