John Sculley Quotes

Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Design is thinking made visual.

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

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

The technical process which is interesting in it's own right but I think the creative process is what's more intriguing to me.

The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much.

You have to think outside the box.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

I think there are dozens or hundreds of different forms of creativity. Pondering science and math problems for years is different from improvising jazz. Something which seems to me remarkable is how unconscious the creative process is. You encounter a problem, but can't solve it.

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things.

I like taking things apart and putting them back together. Tinkering. I'd be a professional tinkerer. Tinkerbell. I think that's what they're called.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

I like talking to engineers best. They built bridges, they're very precise, very disciplined, yet I find they have roving minds.

Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.

This is one of my favorites. People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: 'We know you said it was impossible, but we're going to do this, this, and that to get us there.'

Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

Creativity, as I see it, is the process of putting your imagination to work. It's been defined rather simply as applied imagination. That's not a bad way to think about it.

If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, What if I did the opposite? Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are.

Creativity is people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it.

Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.

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 back is against the wall financially, creative juices flow.