Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries.
Interpretation
Disruptive ideas often originate outside the conventional sectors they impact.
This quote highlights the tendency for groundbreaking ideas and innovations to emerge from outside the established norms of specific industries. It suggests that fresh perspectives and creative thinking from outside an industry can lead to significant transformations within that industry, emphasizing the importance of cross-disciplinary insights and the value of outsider viewpoints in driving progress and change.
In practice
In a business meeting to inspire creative thinking among team members.
The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.
The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
It doesn't matter much where your company sits in its industry ecosystem, nor how vertically or horizontally integrated it is - what matters is its relative 'share of customer value' in the final product or solution, and its cost of producing that value.
The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.
Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.
Optimism is an essential ingredient of innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security, adventure over staying in safe places?
Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.
Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.
There's a silly notion that failure's not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
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