Robert Reich Quotes

Don’t ask our customers what they want. Ask yourself what they would want if they knew what you know of what is possible for us to do for them. The burden is on us to understand the consumer’s needs sufficiently to answer that question.

Starting a startup is a process of trial and error. What guided the founders through this process was their empathy for the users. They never lost sight of making things that people would want.

People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on marketing research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.

Big ideas come from forward thinking people who challenge the norm, think outside the box, and invent the world they see inside rather than submitting to the limitations of current dilemmas

Good problem-seekers are in higher demand than good problem-solvers.

When [competitors are] in the shower in the morning, they're thinking about how they're going to get ahead of one of their top competitors. Here in the shower, we're thinking about how we are going to invent something on behalf of a customer.

Market leaders inevitably slip into decline when they tell the people what they want instead of giving the people what they want.

Telling people how to be creative is easy - being creative is difficult.

Only creativity can see past problems to find solutions. This holds true for every area of life.

Great leaders and great organizations are good at seeing what most of us can’t see. They are good at giving us things we would never think of asking for.

Apple's goal isn't to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products... We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence, we'll make some money. But we're really clear about what our goals are.

To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.

Now, inventiveness and empathy, those qualities, if they're together in the same person, you've got an entrepreneurial genius. But they do tend to be slightly separate.

Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It's the most practical thing a business-man can employ.

Any leader who asks the right questions of the right people has the potential to discover and develop great ideas.

Being creative isn't confined to a specific set of professions -- everyone can and should be innovative.

Every good product I've ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They wanted to use it themselves.

A lot of times it's an asset to not know everything about everything... A lot of really great, innovative things have happened when people just didn't know it wasn't supposed to be possible.

Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being.

Often we use the word problem only because we have not learned that imagination and creativity can handle the situation.

Listen to your customers but don't (always) believe what they say-they know even less about the future than you.

The natural tendency of children is to solve problems, but we try to indoctrinate them with facts, which they are supposed to feed back, and then we fail them. And that's child abuse. And you should never raise children that way. You should cultivate and encourage their natural tendencies to create solutions to the problems around them.

When your parents regulate everything you hear and everything you intake, it forces you to get creative in other ways.

Every single human being is creative and maximizing that creativity is critical to happiness and economic growth. Economic growth is driven by creativity, so if we want to increase it, we have to tap into the creativity of everyone. That's what makes me optimistic. For the first time in human history, the basic logic of our economy dictates that further economic development requires the further development and use of human creative capabilities. The great challenge of our time is to find ways to tap into every human's creativity.