10 Fantastic Lessons from the World Best Innovation Quotations
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible to others.
- Jonathon Swift
Nothing works better defining great lessons than innovation quotations from the best masters on this subject. Here you find 20 of my personal favorites on innovation. I have used them to derive 10 innovation lessons to learn from.
Our agency focuses on creativity and innovation. From time to time we’ll post interesting tidbits on creative thinking in general. Many on how to generate innovative ideas for business adaptation and change. And vision. We are always fascinated by this skill. And it is a great skill to have in our view. Does it mean you see everything? Certainly not. It does mean you have the ability to see what many cannot. And then act on these. Vision doesn’t count without action. And not without initiating innovation.
Let’s review the lessons and the quotations that they were derived from:
Lesson 1 Work the right problem.
It’s not that they can’t find the solution … they can’t find the problem.
— G K Chesterton
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.
-Arthur Koestler
Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
— Goethe
A lot of what drives innovation comes from understanding the customers and their needs and problem. If this isn’t done well, or worse, correctly, then the rest doesn’t matter.
Lesson 2 Be open-minded
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.
- Dee Hock
We cannot solve a problem by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-A. Einstein
The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in your mind and still be able to function.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Being creative in your thinking is difficult at best. If you are depending on your old ideas and small, incremental change only, the difficulty is drastically increased.
Lesson 3 Practice imagination
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions
- Albert Einstein
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks a real advance in science.
— Albert Einstein
Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth.
The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable
- Carl Jung
We try to challenge ourselves to be creative. Sometimes they are business-related. Other times they are not. And now we have an arsenal of things that I do on a regular basis to stretch our thinking. It’s trying to make creative thinking and practice a consistent habit. Imagination and curiosity are our most important assets.
Lesson 4 Explore and discover
Being right keeps us in place. Being wrong forces us to explore.
-Steven Johnson
Innovation occurs at the intersection of previously unconnected and unrelated planes of thought.
- Idris Mootee
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought
- Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth.
The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.
- Carl Jung
A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can’t be creative without playing.
- Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry
Always look for alternatives, improvements, and non-standard ways of solving problems. Many of the ideas that your team will come up with will be unfit, some of them will be excellent and a few will be brilliant. Sometimes one brilliant idea is all it takes to make the huge business success.
Lesson 5 Ask good questions
To find the exact answer, one must first ask the exact question.
— S. Tobin Webster
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks a real advance in science.
- Albert Einstein
The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.
- Anthony Jay
The ability to ask good questions is most often more critical than jumping to the correct solutions.
Lesson 6 Try wild and crazy
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it.
-A. Einstein
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.
-Arthur Koestler
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions
- Albert Einstein
In many companies, employees are so afraid of making mistakes that they don’t pursue their best ideas. They simply follow the rules and keep their heads down, which drives nothing but mediocrity. Don’t let them get in this rut. Encourage wild and crazy.
Lesson 7 Don’t fear failure
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
— Edward de Bono
James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner, “failed” at more than 5,100 prototypes before getting it just right. In fact, nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and “failures.” The great innovators and achievers weren’t necessarily smarter or inherently more talented. They simply released their fear of failure and kept trying. They didn’t let setbacks or misfires extinguish their curiosity and imagination.
