Top 100 Innovations Quotes

Since Mashable’s inception, some of our most popular articles have focused on the science behind the world’s coolest innovations.

I’m in favor of inequality if it comes about from people making great innovations that make us all better off. And I think those people deserve to be rich. But the people who get rich by lobbying the Congress to give them special protections that come out of the hides of the workers seems to be a bad idea.

Education in the light of present-day knowledge and need calls for some spirited and creative innovations both in the substance and the purpose of current pedagogy.

The hypothesis that economic organization is the resultant of a series of historic accidents is intructive in that many organizational innovations appear to be the result of trial and error.

We should explore ways to make us a more amazing species. A more fascinating society. We should embrace our innovations and evolve with them.

In a healthy economy, empowering, sustaining and efficiency innovations operate in balance. A healthy economy creates and sustains more jobs before squeezing out inefficiencies.

The most dynamic cities have always been immersed in the critical innovations of their time.

There are… certainly more innovations on ‘Revolver’… but the truth of the matter is ‘Sgt. Pepper’ has something that was just completely different and unique at that moment.

In an environment where you’ve got to push innovations out the door fast and keep the cost of innovation low, the probability that you’ll be successful is actually much higher.

When it comes to providing aid, developing innovations, and making bold steps that change the course of history, the United States is usually on the front lines.

Tech innovation is something societies have to pursue as vigorously as they can. We have to innovate civically and socially at the same rate; otherwise, you create unfortunate disruptions, and that’s where you have people opposing technological innovations.

By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore’s Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi’s Code.

If you look at the history of innovation, the innovations coming through the defence department have been some of the most important innovations ever. Little things like drones, sensors, and the Internet of Things are defence-type initiatives, but the big one is the Internet itself.

In a time when it is common for chefs to simply reproduce the innovations of others, the few who speak for themselves through their food become the skilled artists of their time.

Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. They rapidly spread economic discovery – the scarce and costly knowledge of what retail concepts and operational innovations actually work.

Disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else.

Efficiency innovations are a natural part of the economic cycle, but these are the innovations that streamline process and actually reduce the number of available jobs.

To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.

You should always look for opportunities to test innovations on a subset of users if you can.

If we can come up with innovations and train young people to take on new jobs, and if we can switch to clean energy, I think we have the capacity to build this world not dependent on fossil-fuel. I think it will happen, and it won’t destroy economy.

When a nanotech company matures and becomes a real business, it becomes something else. It becomes a biotech company or a cleantech company or a memory chip company. Nanotechnology has fueled the core innovations in electronics and energy.

Empowering innovations require long-term investments, which tie up capital for years and years. So companies are using capital to create more capital, and consequently, the world is awash in capital, but the innovations we need to advance aren’t there.

If innovations were predictable, they wouldn’t be discoveries.

Innovations never happen as planned.

Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential.

Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so.

Well into the 20th century, scholars viewed economic advances as resulting from commercial innovations enabled by the discoveries of scientists – discoveries that come from outside the economy and out of the blue.

Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.

I am, as far as my politics reaches, ‘King and Country’ – no ‘Innovations in Religion and Government’ say I.

We should make innovations in coal-mining and metallurgical industries in particular so as to revitalize the overall economy of the country.

We need the next generation to be motivated and to push technological boundaries, to seek out new innovations.

New technologies are rapidly giving rise to unprecedented methods of warfare. Innovations that yesterday were science fiction could cause catastrophe tomorrow, including nanotechnologies, combat robots, and laser weapons.

Electricity is an example of a general purpose technology, like the steam engine before it. General purpose technologies drive most economic growth, because they unleash cascades of complementary innovations, like lightbulbs and, yes, factory redesign.

GIS is being influenced by and integrating with all kinds of new innovations such as faster computing, big data, the cloud, smart devices, and distributed processing.

I was honoured recently to accept the position of president of Mizrachi U.K. I did so because I believe our eternal challenge as Jews is both straightforward and also awash with complexity: How to sanctify the innovations of the modern world in accordance with our eternal Jewish values?

To me, part of the magic of this era is that the very same innovations, discoveries, and technologies that are allowing us to live longer, healthier lives are also creating a healthier economy.

Empowering innovations transform something that is complicated and expensive into something that is so much more simple and affordable that a much larger population can enjoy it.

Britain beat us to the abolition of slavery; the Isle of Man, New Zealand, and Finland all decided to give women the vote well before the United States. Eventually, we got smart and borrowed these egalitarian innovations.

People talk about innovations and evolutions and that kind of thing; I don’t understand about that nonsense. It’s like, all instruments are there to use all the time.

Google the name Prometheus, and see how often it has been given to innovations in many different fields, notably science, medicine and space exploration. The fire he stole can be seen, too, as the spark generating all artistic creativity.

We love serious technology innovations, and there is a strong bias towards large technology innovations that are sort of disruptive to the current market.

Perhaps sooner than we think, African innovations will help the rest of the world create lasting social and economic value.

The challenge of global warming should stimulate a whole raft of manifestly benign innovations – for conserving energy and generating it by ‘clean’ means (biofuels, innovative renewables, carbon sequestration, and nuclear fusion).

Efficiency innovations provide return on investment in 12-18 months. Empowering innovations take 5-10 years to yield a return. We have ample capital – oceans of capital – that is being reinvested into efficiency innovation.

The United States ran the table on Internet innovations, creating companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, YouTube, and others. Europe and Japan scarcely contributed.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

China’s history is marked by thousands of years of world-changing innovations: from the compass and gunpowder to acupuncture and the printing press. No one should be surprised that China has re-emerged as an economic superpower.

Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.

Innovations, instantly followed by a demented lust for them, now arrive with dizzying speed, not just daily, but in one-hour delivery slots.

By venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth – scientific advances and innovations that come from this kind of research create products we use in our daily lives.

It’s during wartime that innovations happen.

There are three types of innovations that affect jobs and capital: empowering innovations, sustaining innovations and efficiency innovations.

What’s unique about the Mormon Church is that it encourages inquiry. I really do think my research and religion are all on the same page. I never could have come up with the notion of disruptive innovations, which went against a lot of conventional wisdom, if I hadn’t been raised to always be asking questions.

Empowerment of individuals is a key part of what makes open source work, since in the end, innovations tend to come from small groups, not from large, structured efforts.

The world needs more social innovations.

America is the only major country that tries to ascertain who was the first applicant to invent the product or procedure. This may seem fair, but long proceedings to determine precisely when each party conceived an idea result mostly in keeping innovations from hitting the market.

A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations – paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on – came to Europe via the Silk Road.

Numerous studies have shown income inequality growing since the late 1970s. Real earnings have fallen for many families, with globalization, the decline of unions and technological innovations eroding workers’ wages.

As a consequence of these hesitations and of the vague character of such innovations, the Commission on Human Rights itself had doubts from the beginning about its role and its functions in general.

Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds.

I think all great innovations are built on rejections.

It is users that are driving the networks with innovations on top of the networks and with innovations in the devices space. This is very healthy.

I think about the automobile, I think about like, when I was a kid, you know, the invention of the answering machine, which I was like, ‘Wow.’ Or call waiting, which was, like, very big. It was a very big thing. Call waiting was a very big thing. And these incremental innovations happen constantly.

The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders, and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organising production and distribution and culture will emerge.

Data is the kind of ubiquitous resource that we can shape to provide new innovations and new insights, and it’s all around us, and it can be mined very easily.

If you give the boss all the decision-making power, they see the world through their eyes. The big innovations are generally such a shift that they won’t see it. For a long time, it looked like it was just inevitable that you would get slow and bureaucratic.

The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

I deeply admire the American Presidency as a political and constitutional institution. I believe it is, one of the great, and remarkable innovations in our Constitution, and has been one of the most successful features of the Constitution in protecting the liberties of the American people.

College graduates work in every sector of the American economy, and the research engines incubated within our universities generate a wealth of ideas and innovations that have an enormous impact on our lives.

My aspiration is that M&M become one of the most customer-centric organizations in the world. If we focus on understanding our customers, we will be able to develop customer-centric innovations.

We need to pass measures that protect consumers’ private information while also encouraging new technological innovations.

Technology in renewable energy has already led to many innovations in business models, products, and solutions.

I am continuously amazed by innovations in security and surveillance technology as a member of the House committees on both Homeland Security and Intelligence.

If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.

The Republicans are wrong in thinking that the rich create jobs. In reality, many of the richest Americans have been investing in efficiency innovations rather than to create jobs. And the Democrats are wrong, because growth won’t happen if they distribute the wealth of the wealthy to everyone else.

The innovations we need at our systems level require an understanding of business, psychology, and policy, but doing it with a deep, deep understanding of how our decisions create barriers for fairness and opportunity for some people.

I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

I thought the chances of becoming a Nobel Prize laureate were minuscule because there are so many other innovations and discoveries that happen almost every day.

Selling public property is the true Chicago way. Had Mr. Obama not been elected president, the nation’s business journals would be falling over one another to praise his city for its daring, market-friendly innovations.

The renewable industry claims technical innovations will improve solar and wind – but in reality nothing can change the lower power density of sunlight and wind.

We are putting the customer at the center of everything we do and are directing our resources towards those innovations and investments that will strengthen our ability to deliver a better McDonald’s experience over time.

I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.

No nation has embraced Total Quality Management, e-commerce and e-government with greater enthusiasm than Dubai. Such innovations have given Dubai a competitive edge and an accelerated growth rate that few could match.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

We are living in one of those rare moments in history when things may come apart and be put back together again in ways that will determine the future for decades or more, despite the endless innovations of technology.

We can finish a house, but never a home. Once you fall in love with a house, you find continual pleasures in fixing it up and making innovations that satisfy your creature’s comforts.

Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.

Smart companies fail because they do everything right. They cater to high-profit-margin customers and ignore the low end of the market, where disruptive innovations emerge from.

The Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession posed daunting new challenges for central banks around the world and spurred innovations in the design, implementation, and communication of monetary policy.

Mass application of technological innovations, which constitutes much of the distinctive substance of modern economic growth, is closely connected with the further progress of science, in its turn the basis for additional advance in technology.

The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That’s when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.

Good intentions can often lead to unintended consequences. It is hard to imagine a law intended for the workforce known to Henry Ford can serve the needs of a workplace shaped by the innovations of Bill Gates.

The Internet, like most successful American innovations, have not thrived because of heavy-handed government regulation.

We want to see more sources of alternative finance, from innovations in factoring such as MarketInvoice or in peer-to-peer lending such as Funding Circle which Labour local authorities are now using to support and invest in local businesses.

To achieve the kinds of innovations needed to tackle the climate crisis, government must not shun the private sector, but rather must work closely with industry and our nation’s great research universities.

As Members of Congress we can now engage with our constituents via online innovations like the Huffington Post, while a small business in rural Oregon can use the Internet to find customers around the world.

Many financial innovations such as the increased availability of low-cost mutual funds have improved opportunities for households to participate in asset markets and diversify their holdings.

When innovations become habits, prescriptions, they must be imagined all over again, made new.

Where I work, in the Arab region, people are busy taking up Western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally Western, nor are they traditionally Islamic.