25 Quotes on Innovation to Inspire You

Innovation is everybody’s favorite buzzword these days, especially given the added pressure disruptive technologies like the Internet of Things, Big Data, and cloud computing are putting on businesses. Consequently, the enterprise is seeking to innovate at a pace never before seen. But, what does innovation look like across a business, what are its key characters, its hallmarks of success?

Here, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite thoughts on innovation to help you motivate, stimulate, exhilarate – and innovate – your business.

1. “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” - Margaret Heffernan
2. “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” – Brene Brown
3. “There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn't how we've approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.” – Mark Zuckerburg
4. “If you look at history, innovation doesn't come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.” – Steven Johnson
5. “Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.” – Thomas Friedman
6. “Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” - Alfred North Whitehead
7. “Genius is infinite painstaking.” – Michelangelo
8. “I start where the last man left off.” - Thomas Edison
9. “Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” - William J. Cameron
10. “Innovation is change that unlocks new value.” – Jamie Notter
11. “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” – Woody Allen
12. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
13. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” - General George Patton
14. “It's kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney
15. It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up." – F.M. Young
16. "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." – Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
17. “The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the primary sources of creativity." – Margaret J. Wheatley
18. “Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.” – Chuck Jones
19. "Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." - Theodore Levitt
20. “Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out.” – Clayton Christensen
21. “Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.” – Jeff Bezos
22. “Grit is often the single-most predictor of success. Grit is not just about stubborn persistence. It’s also about choosing the right goal in the first place.” – Jonah Lehrer
23. “The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context.” – David Brooks
24. “Capital isn’t scare; vision is.“ – Sam Walton
25. “At the point that an idea approaches perfection, fashion and expectations surge ahead, leaving the innovator with considerable room to find further improvements.” – Max McKeown