Innovation Block Quotes

An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

In some cases, inventions prohibit innovation because we're so caught up in playing with the technology, we forget about the fact that it was supposed to be important.

We continue to think of new things in old ways.

I realised that success and pure creativity are not very compatible. The more successful you become, the more you become a product of something that generates money. Instead of being able to move forward freely and do what you really wish, you find yourself stuck and obliged to repeat yourself and your previous success.

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

I had no new ideas on the physics we might learn, and I could not compete with the younger generation.

I think it starts to feel really redundant when you start to do something the same way over and over again. I don't think it's good to become so dependent on a certain writing process.

Studios are run by those who are way too old or mostly young, who don't think creatively.

I view risk-aversion as crippling America in many ways.

Most managers are just trying to survive. That's why a lot of smarter guys have been let go from Fortune 500 companies: because they came up with new ideas that no one would allow them to try.

We're scared to death to try new things because we think we have to get it right the first time.