La La Anthony Quotes

A next-generation innovation writer and thought leader worth watching.

Mucken Singh works VERY hard on his brawler's physique!

Every great idea emerges out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation.

Anytime you see a constrained market, where consumption is limited to those who have special skills or are wealthy, that signals an opportunity for innovation.

I feel for today's leaders. I really do. They got to where they are by doing a series of jobs exceptionally well. And that doesn't help them at all with the challenges they now face.

Not only do innovators have to deal with all of the fundamental challenges of innovation, they have to do so in an environment that often is implicitly hostile towards innovation.

The sad truth is as difficult as the first mile can be for entrepreneurs, it is doubly tough inside most large companies as innovators can face some significant headwinds.

Teams working on disruptive ideas need to be small enough that they can be fed by no more than two pizzas.

A spreadsheet for an innovative idea reports the mathematical relationship between made up numbers. You can't cash a spreadsheet.

Successful strategies adhere to a basic pattern.

Have a core concept, but wrap it in a full business model.

It's very easy to skip steps when documenting an idea.

I'm suggesting that principles meant to deal with uncertainty that occurs naturally can be useful to manage the uncertainty that characterizes any new idea.

Document, evaluate, focus, test.

If you work on a new product launch, spent time in a new geography, or work to develop a completely new skill, you have no choice but to figure out new ways to solve problems.

I have a fear right now that what I call the advertising-narcissism complex is sucking up way too much top talent.

People who live in more than two countries are more successful innovators.

Leaders today face challenges for which they are utterly unprepared.

In the face of uncertainty, many companies will default to asking their innovators to study and analyze, which can't actually ever provide a definitive answer.

Data about an innovative idea is rarely crystal clear.

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.