28 Quotes on Open Innovation

I’ve collected 28 of my favourite quotes on innovation and creativity. Enjoy these quick nuggets of wisdom. I hope they will inspire you in your work and give you a new perspective on your day!

1. “You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” - Albert Einstein

2. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.” - Carl Jung

3. “There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

4. “I will act as if what I do will make a difference.” - William James

5. “There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.” - Charles Baudelaire

6. “What is now proved was once only imagined.” - William Blake

7. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

8. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” - Linus Pauling

9. “Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.” - Albert Szent-Gyorgi

10. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” - Shunryu Suzuki

11. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

12. “After years of telling corporate citizens to ‘trust the system,’ many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power.” - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

13. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Albert Einstein

14. “Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.” - Jeff Bezos

15. “Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.” ― Richelle Mead

16. “Dreamers are mocked as impractical. The truth is they are the most practical, as their innovations lead to progress and a better way of life for all of us.” ― Robin S. Sharma

17. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” ― Charles Bower

18. “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” -William Pollard

19. “Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth. So let’s all go exploring.” -Edith Widder

20. “Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.” ― Steven Johnson

21. “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” ― Anthony Jay

22. “If you’re struggling to “think outside the box” remember the box is self-imposed. Who says it has to be a box? Why not a bowl of petunias?” ― Ryan Lilly

23. “Creativity is the new currency, so, are you credited with new thoughts or overdrawn in old thinking?” ― Onyi Anyado

24. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― Richard Buckminster ‘Bucky’ Fuller

25. “Teaching is a creative profession, it is our duty as school leaders and education influencers to offer the right climate to foster innovation and support innovative teaching practices within our schools, and that’s what will make our students succeed in the 21st century.” ― Samer Chidiac

26. “Disruptive innovation is entrepreneurs changing their industry with unique creativity.” ― Onyi Anyado

27. “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -Andre Gide

28. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw