Weird Ideas That Work Quotes

“weird ideas spark innovation because each helps companies do at least one of three things: (1) increase variance in available knowledge, (2) see old things in new ways, and (3) break from the past. These are the three basic organizing principles for innovative work,”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Support a few crackpots, heretics, and dreamers, especially if they are wildly optimistic about their ideas.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Galileo was jailed for asserting that the earth was round.5”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Organizations that learn from their failures forgive and remember, they don’t forgive and forget.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Make sure that slow learners are rewarded—or at least not punished— for expressing their deviant views and acting in odd ways.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”23”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Forgiveness is also important because, as a study of surgical errors found, “when a subordinate sees his technical errors are forgiven, he recognizes there is no incentive to hide them. He is less likely, therefore, to compound his problems by attempting to treat problems that are over his head for fear of superordinate reprisal.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you are right.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“there is little reason to believe that managers or other authorities will make more accurate predictions than anyone else about which new ideas will succeed and fail.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Trust yourself and speak out what you believe. If what you believe is different, dare to be different. Dare to be in a hurry to change things for the better.2 —Geoffrey”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“smart talk trap.”17 This a syndrome where companies hire, reward, and promote people for sounding smart rather than making sure that smart things are done.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Einstein said, “A person who has never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“If you want a creative organization, inaction is the worst kind of failure.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Interviews are useful for other things besides screening candidates. For”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“I use job interviews for two things. First, to recruit people. Second, to get some help with my work. I give job candidates problems I can’t”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Hire people you know you don’t need now, but you think you might need later.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“If you hire people who prompt discomfort in yourself and others, take extra care to listen to their ideas and insist that others do so as well.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Hire newcomers that other people in your company will dislike.” David”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“smart people who get bad grades are listening to their inner voice, doing what they believe is interesting and right.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“To obtain high marks in school often requires a high degree of conformity to conventional ways of looking at the world and people.”24”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Most companies automatically search for fast learners, gregarious people with social graces, who are willing and able to bend to the wishes of others.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“sometimes the best engineers come in bodies that can’t talk,”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“an idea is creative when it is new to people who use or evaluate it, and (at least some of them) believe it could be valuable to themselves or others.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“all great technologies are blends of other technologies.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Vu ja de means seeing old things that are inside and outside the company in new ways.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Most public companies spend less than 2 percent of their annual budgets on R&D.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“innovative companies need a wide range of ideas and that success requires a high failure rate.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“Safe is a word that goes much better with sex than science.”14”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation

“to find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation