If a man writes clearly enough,” said Hemingway, “anyone can see if he fakes.
Uncluding is the art of subtracting every element that doesn’t pull its weight.
If we can’t find valuable work, it’s not because we’re in a recession; we’re in a recession because we can’t find valuable work. We’ve been confusing cause and effect.
All the lessons of invention come down to this: The best design tool is a long eraser with a pencil at one end.
The truth is, most people love change until it affects them.
Extreme resistance can be a portent of extreme success.
New ideas capture and possess the mind that births them,” said Robert Grudin in The Grace of Great Things. “They colonize it and renew its laws.
In developing talent, hard work trumps genetics.
The hallmark of innovation is surprise. No surprise, nothing new. Nothing new, no interest. No interest, no value. Therefore, creating surprise is a crucial step in creating value through innovation.
If you find it hard to describe your idea, don’t fix your description. Fix your idea.
It now seems possible, even necessary, to reconnect art with science, synthesis with analysis, magic with logic.
We just go where we want to go, do what we want to do, and become who we want to become. We want to be unique, but we want to be unique in groups. We want to stand out, but we want to stand out together. In the age of easy group-forming, the basic unit of measurement is not the segment but the tribe.
When your goal is to describe a vision for the future, information is not enough. People are up to their necks in information. What they need is a way to imagine life after the change, and compare it with life today. That’s why it’s called a vision and not a plan.
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. – Aristotle.
We’ve been trained by Industrial Age marketers to believe anything good is already on the shelf.
If our rational brains were deprived of emotion, even the most banal decisions would become impossible.
When you shift your focus from getting grades to gaining understanding, you set yourself on the road to mastery. You begin learning how to learn.
It has a strong internal order, one that answers to a clear and compelling purpose. If you find it hard to describe your idea, stop working on your description. Fix your idea.
A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a corporate identity system. It’s a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. Because it depends on others for its existence, it must become a guarantee of trustworthy behavior. Good branding makes business integral to society and creates opportunity for everyone, from the chief executive to the most distant customer.
A charismatic brand includes a dedication to aesthetics. Why? Because it’s the language of feeling, and in a society that’s information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.