Peter Sims > Quotes

“The key is to take a larger project or goal and break it down into smaller problems to be solved, constraining the scope of work to solving a key problem, and then another key problem.
This strategy, of breaking a project down into discrete, relatively small problems to be resolved, is what Bing Gordon, a cofounder and the former chief creative officer of the video game company Electronic Arts, calls smallifying. Now a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Gordon has deep experience leading and working with software development teams. He’s also currently on the board of directors of Amazon and Zynga. At Electronic Arts, Gordon found that when software teams worked on longer-term projects, they were inefficient and took unnecessary paths. However, when job tasks were broken down into particular problems to be solved, which were manageable and could be tackled within one or two weeks, developers were more creative and effective.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Two fundamental advantages of the little bets approach are highlighted in the research of Professor Saras Sarasvathy: that it enables us to focus on what we can afford to lose rather than make assumptions about how much we can expect to gain, and that it facilitates the development of means as we progress with an idea. Sarasvathy points to the value of what she calls the affordable loss principle. Seasoned entrepreneurs, she emphasizes, will tend to determine in advance what they are willing to lose, rather than calculating expected gains.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“What is the purpose of education? Is it to impart knowledge and facts or is it to nurture curiosity, effortful problem solving, and the capacity for lifelong learning? Educational historians have repeatedly shown that today’s schools were designed during the first half of the twentieth century to meet the demands of the industrial era, not an innovative knowledge economy. “Very few schools teach students how to create knowledge,” says Professor Keith Sawyer of Washington University, a leading education and innovation researcher. “Instead, students are taught that knowledge is static and complete, and they become experts at consuming knowledge rather than producing knowledge.” This is unacceptable. Change”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries

“the value of prototyping: Potential users of ideas are more comfortable sharing their honest reactions when it’s rough,”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“If you look at four-year-olds, they are constantly asking questions and wondering how things work,” Gregersen observed generally. “But by the time they are six and a half years old they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more than provocative questions.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t set out to create one of the fastest-growing startup companies in history; they didn’t even start out seeking to revolutionize the way we search for information on the web. Their first goal, as collaborators on the Stanford Digital Library Project, was to solve a much smaller problem: how to prioritize library searches online.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Unlike most CEOs, when trying something new, Jeff Bezos and his senior team (known as the S Team) don’t try to develop elaborate financial projections or return on investment calculations. “You can’t put into a spreadsheet how people are going to behave around a new product,” Bezos will say.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“the emphasis on linear systems, top-down control, relentless efficiency and eradicating failure left little room for creative discovery and trial and error.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“At the core of this experimental approach, little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“As education and creativity researcher and author Sir Ken Robinson puts it, “We are educating people out of their creativity.” Another major factor is that, for years, organizational management has been developing methods for increasing productivity and minimizing risk and errors that tend to stifle creative experimentation.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“You have to catch people making mistakes and make it so that it’s cool. You have to make it undesirable to play it safe.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Design is a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe complex, ill-structured problems and develop approaches to solve them.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“All I really wanted to do was solve an immediate problem,”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“You can sit down and spend hours crafting some joke that you think is perfect, but a lot of the time, that’s just a waste of time,” Ruby explains.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“recognize the value of seeking out active users and showing them works in progress to develop opportunities and ideas and to see how they react.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“When much is known, procedural planning approaches work perfectly well. When much is unknown, they do not.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“get out into the world to challenge their own assumptions, says, “No facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” As a former marketer, Blank’s point is that people won’t know what problems they are actually solving for customers if they always stay in their cubicles.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Approximately 50 percent of SAP’s service updates, released as enhancements to the core ERP software it sells, originate from its active users. What SAP did is set up what they call an ecosystem that allows its software users to connect online. Someone who uses SAP software as part of their job in the chemicals industry can connect online with other users in similar jobs, consultants, and SAP staff. They can ask questions, respond to others, or suggest modifications to the core software system.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“At the beginning of any new idea, the possibilities can seem infinite, and that wide-open landscape of opportunity can become a prison of anxiety and self-doubt. This is a key reason why failing fast with low-risk prototypes the way Chris Rock does is so helpful: If we haven’t invested much in developing an idea, emotionally or in terms of time or resources, then we are more likely to be able to focus on what we can learn from that effort than on what we’ve lost in making it. Prototyping is one of the most effective ways to both jump-start our thinking and to guide, inspire, and discipline an experimental approach.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“One key reason for this is that the top-down, procedural planning approach is highly dependent on making predictions about the future based on past experience.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Accepting every offer by using “yes … and” language, a cornerstone of improvisation, facilitates building up ideas.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“No one can take their eye off their core business or responsibilities, but anyone can spend a portion of their time and energies using little bets to discover, test, and improve new ideas.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Invention and discovery emanate from being able to try seemingly wild possibilities and work in the unknown; to be comfortable being wrong before being right; to live in the world as a keen observer, with an openness to experiences and ideas; to play with ideas without censoring oneself or others; to persist through dark valleys with a growth mind-set; to improvise ideas in collaboration and conversation with others; and, to have a willingness to be misunderstood, sometimes for long periods of time, despite conventional wisdom”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“There are several major improvisation principles. One is that you should “accept every offer.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“One of the best ways to identify creative insights and develop ideas is to throw out the theory and experience things firsthand.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Creativity becomes a way of life. This then is the opportunity and invitation: little bets provide a powerful vehicle to approach life and work in a new way. After all, as children we exhibit a natural desire to tinker, explore, and discover. Just examine research on child development. Starting soon after birth, experimenting and making mistakes are primary ways children learn and discover how things work. That tendency doesn’t vanish when we become adults. As many researchers and observers have described, that innate curiosity which is the basis for so much creativity routinely gets squelched. Perfection is rewarded, while making mistakes is often penalized. The term “failure” has taken on a deeply personal meaning, something to be avoided at nearly all costs.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“According to Weick, “a series of wins at small but significant tasks … reveals a pattern that may attract allies, deter opponents, and lower resistance.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“Ironically, in attempting to minimize risk and reduce errors, GM’s emphasis on regimented systems stymied innovation.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

“finding ways to fail quickly, to invest less emotion and less time in any particular idea or prototype or piece of work, is a consistent feature of the work methods of successful experimental innovators.”
― Peter Sims, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries