Quotes about Innovative Problem-solving

"I could have done it in a much more complicated way," said the Red Queen, immensely proud.

I didn't fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn't work.

Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.

I actually find it's more interesting to play in the niches and find ways to apply technology to relatively straightforward problems.

We never saw obstacles or problems, we only saw situations in need of solutions.

If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a big mistake." –Frank Wilczek

Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success, by Matthew Syed.

PARTING ADVICE? "What I would really like is for those of you who have been told that you're learning disabled, or you're not good at math, or that you're terrible at music, or something like that, to seek out unconventional ways of proving that wrong. Believe not only in yourselves, but that there are [ways, tools, methods] powerful enough to make things that look very difficult much easier than you ever imagined.

I think we need to teach kids two things: 1) how to lead, and 2) how to solve interesting problems. Because the fact is, there are plenty of countries on Earth where there are people who are willing to be obedient and work harder for less money than us.

Lo diferente es mejor cuando es más efectivo o más divertido. Si todo el mundo plantea o resuelve un problema de una determinada manera con resultados deficientes, es hora de preguntarse: ¿qué pasaría si hiciera lo contrario? No sigas un modelo que no funcione. Si la receta es una porquería, no importa lo buen cocinero que seas.

Mickey was not merely the right idea at the right time; he was the creative solution to a crisis in Walt's life.

I prefer to think about problems the way engineers do. If a valve doesn't work, they don't say, "Well, we must have valves, so let's try two valves." If a valve doesn't work, they say, "Well, what would work?" Their rule is, if it doesn't work, don't do it more, do something else.

Don't find fault. Find a remedy.

To pursue bright spots is to ask the question "What's working, and how can we do more of it?" Sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: "What's broken, and how do we fix it?

Seeking out one more option. Finding someone else who's solved our problem. Asking, "What would have to be true for you to be right?" Ooching as a way to dampen politics. Making big decisions based on core priorities. Running premortems and preparades. Laying down tripwires. Using these techniques will improve the results of your group decisions.

Big problem, small solution.

Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades. And

Finding bright spots, then, solves many different problems at once.

Necessity is the motherfucker of invention.

The mind uses its faculty for creativity only when experience forces it to do so.

The ability to know how to get the information is more important than using the mind as a garage of facts.

If you keep a record of all your failures you will soon have a list of everything which cannot be done.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals.