We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Resilience in innovation means discovering endless opportunities rather than being discouraged by perceived limits.
This quote by Jeff Bezos emphasizes the importance of resilience in the context of innovation. While the Gold Rush symbolizes the pursuit of a limited resource, Bezos argues that innovation is an ongoing process that continuously generates new questions and opportunities. Rather than feeling disheartened by perceived limits, one should embrace the endless possibilities that come with innovation, indicating that there is always something new to explore and create.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about entrepreneurship, you might quote Bezos to inspire innovation and persistence.
More from Jeff Bezos
All quotes →Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.
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For a long time, I've ranted against naming your startup community 'Silicon Whatever.' Instead, I believe every startup community already has a name. The Boulder startup community is called Boulder. The L.A. startup community is called L.A. The Washington D.C. startup community is called Washington D.C.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years - part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.
Most innovative things are not obvious to other people at the time. You have to believe in yourself. If you've got a good idea, follow it even though others tell you it's not.
Most of us understand that innovation is enormously important. It's the only insurance against irrelevance. It's the only guarantee of long-term customer loyalty. It's the only strategy for out-performing a dismal economy.
The company's most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand - innovation from everyone.