Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.
I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
In ancient times writing was generally on bamboo or on pieces of silk, which were then called zhi. But silk being expensive and bamboo heavy, these were not convenient to use. Cai Lun then initiated the idea of making paper from bark, hemp, rags, and fishnets.
I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that anyone has gone.
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.
The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
There's a way to do it better - find it.
It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men.
What has been done is but a small beginning of what has to come.
Every innovation has to go through three stages. First people laugh at it. Then they fight it. Then they accept it.
I am a craftsman. But my craft changes the world.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
The inventor looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world.
The alternating current will kill people, of course. So will gunpowder, and dynamite, and whisky.
I have been interested in the subject of electricity for many years, and I am now convinced that the alternating-current system is the system of the future.
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.
Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
Companies stumble for many reasons, of course, but one of the most common is that the very management practices that have allowed them to become industry leaders also make it extremely difficult for them to develop the disruptive technologies that ultimately steal away their markets.
Markets that don't exist can't be analyzed.
The big question of our time is not 'Can it be built?' but 'Should it be built?'
Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them.
The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.
Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy. It is called value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant.
The number-one corporate strategy for disruptive innovation is to create a market where none exists.
The chasm represents the gulf between two distinct marketplaces for technology products — the first, an early market dominated by enthusiasts and visionaries, and the second, a mainstream market dominated by pragmatists and conservatives.
The old rule was this: create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing. The new rule is: create remarkable products that the right people seek out.
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists.
The most important breakthroughs come from loonshots, widely dismissed ideas whose champions are often wrong but keep going anyway.
Nurture your loonshots. Love the problem, not the solution.
A sprint gives you a superpower: you can fast-forward into the future to see your product and customer reactions before making any expensive commitments.
The best way to innovate is to look at what you're doing and find the opportunities within it to make people feel something.
Design an organization that continuously challenges its own business model.
Disruptive technologies typically emerge in insignificant markets that industry leaders don't care about.
The logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of their companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership.
The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside.
