L.B. Scott Quotes

Most companies are built to execute today's business model, not discover tomorrow's.

Innovation is doubly hard inside big companies.

Another key role the CEO plays is to focus efforts.

We fool ourselves into thinking that the spreadsheets that capture our financial projections are something different than what they are.

Three of our core corporate values are inclusiveness, collaboration, and humility.

Companies get into grooves and they keep sharpening what they are doing, when in fact what they really need to do sometimes is to stop and do something completely differently.

Creating the new increasingly is more than 50 percent of a top leader's job.

I think the most important thing to do is to recognize the fundamentally different circumstances of pursuing growth.

Aside from the equivalent of blowing up the lab or letting a pathogen escape, the only failure is spending too long or too much money to learn.

There's a general belief that failure is the friend of the innovator, but I've come to view it a different way.

I think people make innovation much more complicated than it needs to be.

The school at which you studied - design school, disruptive school, TRIZ school, user-centered innovation school, etc - determines the specific words you use.

Everyone knows innovation involves developing unique understanding of a market, thinking expansively to develop a solution, and then finding a way to test rigorously and adapt quickly.

So many people tell me that they aren't creative or they aren't innovative, and it's just not true.

I've come to the conclusion that the core characteristic that separates companies that get innovation from those that don't is a simple word: curiosity.

The curious company studies the anomalies or the unexpected findings. The company that isn't curious ignores them or punishes people who don't do exactly what they set out to do.

Now, I worry a bit about the TEDification of the world where style trumps substance, so hopefully you have a good blend of both!

You have to make the decision about whether you want to avoid or you want to overcome the resistance.

You still want to be thoughtful about what you do, no doubt, but you have to learn through trial-and-error experimentation as well.

I've always found that working through ideas in written form really changes the thinking.

You have to chip away at it and shape it to let the winning idea emerge.

The reality is customers lie - not because they want to want to deceive you, but because they don't do a good job of predicting what they will do in the future.

You can always figure out how to deliver things in somewhat controlled situations, but when you start to get into the reality of the market you start to figure out what isn't going to work.

You can increase the odds of spotting the weak points in your approach if you really think about the end-to-end business model you plan to follow - how you plan to create, capture, and deliver value.

What looks like resistance in many cases is rational responses to incentives and ingrained resource-allocation processes.

Some people who were central to former success aren't the right people for your future success.

Avoiding along some dimensions is easy. Create organization space and bring in some new talent so the innate cultural resistance is less material. Unfortunately, it's rarely that easy.

I use the term "fool's gold white space" to highlight a common problem for innovation. People see a market that doesn't exist, and assume that one should exist.

Most startup companies have two people, and they figure out creative ways to swarm problems. They move faster and have more impact.

Small teams move faster than big teams.

Think about how much it costs to learn more. Sometimes you want to build confidence by knocking off the easy things.

Seeking chaos is at least one way to develop the skills and mindsets to tackle ambiguity.

The current institutionally provided retirement plans will not cover people's needs upon retirement.

People don't place their trust in government or company pension plans; they have to be self-reliant.

Even some of the greatest technology-led revolutions, or allegedly technology-led, really were only made possible because of trends already present.

At the end of the day, a "jump scare" scares the audience for the moment. Slow burn horror ideas scare people forever.

That's to me what always is compelling about villains. I am much more interested in how they think than in what they even do.

Any conqueror in human history has always been ultimately someone who exists purely for the expansion of their own ego, through amounting more.

If we had one person who could perfectly read minds we could solve a lot of problems in the world in a very short period of time.

I don't want to be a mind rapist!

Martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural.

We love bringing verisimilitude to audiences, hopefully having experiences you'll never have.

What everyone is always afraid of is the unknown, or the unfamiliar. You got to have a look for a character that is mysterious and menacing, and doesn't quite look like what we've seen before.

Dear God, I understand that if I fail to believe in you, I'll burn in hell for eternity. Thanks for being such a good sport about it.

Your pet is not your friend. It is your hostage.

You have sexual tendencies that are not normal, and you should be ashamed of them.

I respect your right to hold your religious beliefs, and if they help you, I think that's great. I would, however, like to inform you that you are a raving kook.

That special bond you think you have with your pet is imaginary. As long as it has food and water, you could get hit by a train tomorrow, and your pet wouldn't think anything of it.

I could puke on myself and still be good looking.

I didn't buy the piano to play it, I bought it because it looks nice.