Quotes

Below I have summarised the quotes and ideas that have influenced my thinking on innovation at the intersection of technology, business, and society. The hyperlinks will directly lead you to the posts that reflect those ideas. I will amend the list as this learning journey unfolds.

– Amara’s Law – We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

– Kenneth Boulding – Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

– Cardwell’s Law – No nation has been (technologically) very creative for more than a historically short period.

– Collingridge Dilemma – When change is easy, the need for it cannot be foreseen; when the need for change is apparent, change has become difficult, expensive and time consuming.

– Thomas Jefferson – He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.

– Morris Theorem – Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways of doing things. And they rarely know what they are doing.

– Bertrand Russell – One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

– Jean-Baptiste Say – The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.

– Shirky Principle (paraphrased) – Every organisation will try to preserve the problem that it was created to solve.