The Innovators by Walter Isaacson
by Parker · 36 things on Twos
- “My own uncompromising principle is to endeavor to love truth and God before fame and glory” - Ada Lovelace
- Sometimes innovation is a matter of timing. A big idea comes along at just the right moment when the technology exists to implement it
- Innovation requires articulation
- If you stumble when you try to read it aloud, you’d better fix that sentence
- Creative leaps are the result of an evolutionary process that occurs when ideas, concepts, technologies, and engineering methods ripen together
- Computer innovators can find themselves left behind if they get stuck in their ways. The same traits that make them inventive, such as stubbornness and focus, can make them resistant to change when new ideas come along
- Sparks come from ideas rubbing against each other rather than bolts out of the blue
- Creativity comes through chance encounters
- One aspect of innovation is inventing new devices; another is inventing popular ways to use these devices
- Bet primarily on people rather than on the idea
- Dave Packard gave his workers flexible hours and plenty of leeway in determining how to accomplish their objectives
- “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” - Andy Grove
- Innovation can be sparked by engineering talent, but it must be combined with business skills to set the world afire
- Technology should be made open and friendly and convivial rather than daunting and mysterious and Orwellian
- If in some way, you could contribute significantly to the way humans could handle complexity and urgency, that would be universally helpful
- “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Kay
- “Although it can be used to communicate with others through the knowledge utilities of the future such as a school library, we think that a large fraction of its use will inflvolve reflexive communication of the owner with himself through this personal medium, much sd paper and notebooks are currently used.” - Alan Kay
- “If you act like you can do something then it will work. Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.” - Nolan Bushnell
- “Money is not the greatest of motivators. Folks do their best work when they are driven by passion. When they are having fun. This is as true for playwrights and sculptors and entrepreneurs as it is for software engineers.” - Linus Torvalds
- Leaders in a voluntary collaborative have to encourage others to follow their passion, not boss them around
- “The best and most effective way to lead is by letting people do things because they want to do them, not because you want them to.” - Linus Torvalds
- People like to be part of communities and technology needs to be simple if it is going to appeal to the masses
- “A web of notes with links between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system.” - Tim Berners-Lee
- Creating user simplicity is one of the keys to a successful innovation
- One of the basic lessons for innovation is to stay focused
- Connecting into a community is one of the basic desires that drive the digital world
- 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
- “If you invent something, that doesn’t necessarily help anybody. You’ve got to actually get it into the world; you’ve got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.” - Larry Page
- “You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. You have to have a healthy disregard for the impossible. You should try to do things that most people would not do.” - Larry Page
- Blaming the user is not a good strategy. The user is never wrong
- Creativity is a collaborative process
- “People don’t invent things on the internet. They simply expand on an idea that already exists.” - Evan Williams
- Physical proximity is beneficial
- Visions without execution are hallucinations
- The most successful endeavors in the digital age were those run by leaders who fostered collaboration while also providing a clear vision
- The best leaders are those with the deepest understanding of the engineering and product design