“I’m a hot rodder. I’m an innovator. I’m not an engineer. I hope I’m never accused of that, because that narrows your thinking.” -Carroll Shelby
A colleague once said about me, “Not only does he think outside the box, he doesn’t even know there IS a box.”
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Once, I said to him, “Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.” Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.”
But he came back a few days later to say, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don’t really understand it.”
From “Feynman’s Lost Lecture” (about physics classes Feynman taught in the 1960s) by Caltech colleague David Goodstein
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“The most important point I want to make is that the true problem, the true difficulty, and where the greatest potential lies is building the machine that makes the machine.
In other words, building the factory … like a product,” said Elon Musk at the annual meeting, predicting a new factory would deliver a “ten-fold improvement” in productivity.
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American business centers around the ability of the truly talented inventors or entrepreneurs to have the freedom to build their own happiness.
This happiness is about letting them develop on their own, which, for the truly talented, will lead to a greater happiness of the society. This is the case for “going it alone.” Collective organizations are threatened by the truly talented since, in reality, those people do not require the team. The team requires them.
From “Teamwork vs. Going It Alone” by Walter Johnson
The “dragon pit” is the gap between what is and what could be. It’s a space filled with discomfort, darkness, and doubt.
Most people would rather grab the first rope thrown to them – what is – rather than stay and fight the dragons guarding what could be. But what could be is where the ideas are. A genius is someone who can tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty while generating as many ideas as possible.
from “The 46 Rules of Genius” by Marty Neumeier
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It’s far more dangerous to fly too low than too high, because it feels safe to fly low. We settle for low expectations and small dreams and guarantee ourselves less than we are capable of. By flying too low, we shortchange not only ourselves but also those who depend on us or might benefit from our work. We’re so obsessed about the risk of shining brightly that we’ve traded in everything that matters to avoid it.
The path that’s available to each of us is neither reckless stupidity nor mindless compliance. No, the path that’s available to us is to be human, to do art, and to fly far higher than we’ve been taught is possible. We’ve built a world where it’s possible to fly higher than ever, and the tragedy is that we’ve been seduced into believing that we ought to fly ever lower instead.
from “The Icarus Deception” by Seth Godin
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It was July of 1961 and the 38 members of the Green Bay Packers football team were gathered together for the first day of training camp. The previous season had ended with a heartbreaking defeat when the Packers squandered a lead late in the 4th quarter and lost the NFL Championship to the Philadelphia Eagles.
The Green Bay players had been thinking about this brutal loss for the entire off-season and now, finally, training camp had arrived and it was time to get to work. The players were eager to advance their game to the next level and start working on the details that would help them win a championship.
Their coach, Vince Lombardi, had a different idea.
He took nothing for granted. He began a tradition of starting from scratch, assuming that the players were blank slates who carried over no knowledge from the year before… He began with the most elemental statement of all. “Gentlemen,” he said, holding a pigskin in his right hand, “this is a football.”
From “Vince Lombardi on the Hidden Power of Mastering the Fundamentals” by James Clear
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Instead of asking, “WHAT should we do to compete?” the question must be asked, “WHY” did we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”
From “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek
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Determine to break out of the red ocean of similar offerings.
From “Blue Ocean Shift” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
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