The best quotes by the author we have brought to you
“A big idea comes along at just the moment when the technology exists to implement it.” (The Innovators Quotes)
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“A nation which depends upon others for its new basic scientific knowledge will be slow in its industrial progress and weak in its competitive position in world trade.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“A physicist is one who’s concerned with the truth,” he later said. “An engineer is one who’s concerned with getting the job done.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired, and creativity should be nurtured.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“But the main lesson to draw from the birth of computers is that innovation is usually a group effort, involving collaboration between visionaries and engineers, and that creativity comes from drawing on many sources. Only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a light bulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement or garret or garage.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Email did more than facilitate the exchange of messages between two computer users. It led to the creation of virtual communities, ones that, as predicted in 1968 by Licklider and Taylor, were “selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Finally, I was struck by how the truest creativity of the digital age came from those who were able to connect the arts and sciences.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“First and foremost is that creativty is a collaborative process. Innovation comes from teams more often than the lightbulb moments of lone geniuses.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“I learned electronics as a kid by messing around with old radios that were easy to tamper with because they were designed to be fixed.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“In other words, the future might belong to people who can best partner and collaborate with computers.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Innovation occurs when ripe seeds fall on fertile ground. Instead of having a single cause, the great advances of 1937 came from a combination of capabilities, ideas, and needs that coincided in multiple places.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Innovation requires articulation.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Innovation requires having at least three things: a great idea, the engineering talent to execute it, and the business savvy (plus deal-making moxie) to turn it into a successful product.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Innovation resides where art and science connect is not new. Leonardo da Vinci was the exemplar of the creativity that flourishes when the humanities and sciences interact. When Einstein was stymied while working out General Relativity, he would pull out his violin and play Mozart until he could reconnect to what he called the harmony of the spheres.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“It is in the mind of a single person that creative ideas and concepts are born.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Knowing that great conceptions are worth little without precision execution”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Like many aspects of the digital age, this idea that innovation resides where art and science connect is not new. Leonardo da Vinci was the exemplar of the creativity that flourishes when the humanities and sciences interact.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Like many entrepreneurs, Bushnell had no shame about distorting reality in order to motivate people.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Many people suppose that computing machines are replacements for intelligence and have cut down the need for original thought,” Wiener wrote. “This is not the case.” The more powerful the computer, the greater the premium that will be placed on connecting it with imaginative, creative, high-level human thinking.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Once again, the greatest innovation would come not from the people who created the breakthroughs but from the people who applied them usefully.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“One day ladies will take their computers for walks in the park and tell each other ‘My little computer said such a funny thing this morning!”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“People don’t invent things on the Internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“People will provide judgment, intuition, empathy, a moral compass, and human creativity.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“People with the halo effect seem to know exactly what they’re doing and, moreover, make you want to admire them for it.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Progress comes not only in great leaps but also from hundreds of small steps.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Public awareness is an important component of innovation.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Sometimes innovation is a matter of timing. A big idea comes along at just the moment when the technology exists to implement it.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“That was back when state governments valued education and realized the economic and social value of making it affordable.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“The culture at Atari was a natural outgrowth of Nolan Bushnell’s personality. But it was not simply self-indulgent. It was based on a philosophy that drew from the hippie movement and would help define Silicon Valley. At it’s core were certain principles: authority should be questioned, hierarchies should be circumvented, nonconformity should be admired and creativity should be nurtured.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“The maker culture in America, ever since the days of community barn raisers and quilting bees, often involved do-it-ourselves rather than do-it-yourself.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“The most successful endeavors in the digital age were those run by leaders who fostered collaboration while also providing a clear vision. Too often these are seen as conflicting traits: a leader is either very inclusive or a passionate visionary. But the best leaders could be both. Robert”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“The tale of their teamwork is important because we don’t often focus on how central that skill is to innovation.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“The thing that Von Neumann had, which I’ve noticed that other geniuses have, is the ability to pick out, in a particular problem, the one crucial thing that’s important.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“There was a key lesson for innovation: Understand which industries are symbiotic so that you can capitalize on how they will spur each other on.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“When you help build something, you own it, you’re vested in it. That’s far more rewarding than having it handed down to you.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“While she slept, her subconscious untangled the knot that her conscious mind had been unable to.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
“You read everything that’s part of the job,” he said. “You accumulate all this trivia, and you hope that someday maybe a millionth of it will be useful.”
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
