Innovation Quotes of the Week – April 29, 2012

This week we continue a featured series of some of my favorite innovation-related quotes. Please contribute your favorite innovation quotes in the comments and I’ll feature the best submissions in next week’s Innovation Quotes of the Week!

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

– David Sable

“An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.”

– Dean Kamen

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

– From the movie ‘Meet the Robinsons’

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

– Albert Einstein

On Einstein’s quote “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” from yesterday:

“I don’t think it is either/or proposition. Imagination leads to new knowledge and new knowledge leads to imagination. At end of the day, you need a balanced team of imaginators and knowledge practitioners/executioners to move the needle.”

– Sanjiv Karani

“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.”

– Mason Cooley

“Figure out how to take risks that keep you in the game even if you fail.”

– Seth Godin

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”

– Albert Einstein

“But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.”

– Steve Jobs

“The thing you push against is the thing that lifts you up.”

– From a Delta Airlines advertisement

“Mommy, how come Daddy is not out in the garage inventing things if he is in innovation”

– My 7 year old daughter

“Pathmaker, there is no path. The path is made by walking. By walking you make the path.”

– Antonio Machado

“If you put fences around people, you get sheep.”

– William McKnight (former CEO of 3M)

“For people without passion and talent, information has no value.”

– Jef Staes

“Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.”

– Barack Obama

“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”

– Alexis de Tocqueville

And here a few of the many thoughts that I added to the conversation during the week on Twitter and elsewhere:

• “As the innovation velocity of an organization becomes a more crucial competitive differentiator in the global marketplace, it is mandatory that innovation becomes everyone’s responsibility in the organization.”
• “In our hyper-competitive, always-connected world, organizations are increasingly becoming focused on improving both their speed to market and their revenue per headcount. In this environment, more senior leaders every day are seeing innovation as the primary way to gain competitive advantage and to simultaneously increase revenue and cut costs.”
• “We must find a way to strike a balance between what employees need to do for the organization and what they want to do for the organization. Otherwise, human capital is being wasted, flushed down the drain.”
• “Being successful in the innovation aspects of social business requires an organization to establish a place and a reason for mutually beneficial dialogue to occur.”

What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future Innovation Quotes of the Week!

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Braden Kelley is a popular innovation speaker, embeds innovation across the organization with innovation training, and builds social business strategies that attract and engage customers, partners, and employees. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and tweets from @innovate.