Blake Mycoskie Quotes

The biggest handicap in research is an ability to think outside the box. The handicap is being encumbered by all the conventional wisdom in a given field.

If you're gonna make connections which are innovative... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

Why is it that, when we want to think outside the proverbial box, we often put ourselves in one? We gather our team in a conference room, plaster the walls with sticky paper, and wait for the ideas to flow in a stream of marker scribbles. How often has your quest for innovation peaked at renovation - new dressing on old ideas?

To me, unconventional thinking is approaching a problem and asking, 'Why not? Why can't something be done?' If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it.

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.

What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.

I have a saying, which is, 'Crazy is good for business.' I think rock and roll really is about being a bit crazy.

People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.

One of the great things about young entrepreneurs is that they don't know that something can't be done. So they try something that's so audacious and usually end up pulling it off.

I have discovered that for me - now, maybe it doesn't work for everybody - for me, it is much more effective to arrive at any situation as a man from Mars than to try to fit in.

Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are almost always...either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change....These are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.

If you rely only on experience, you'll simply keep applying old solutions to new problems.

I'm for experimentation. I'm for trying things. That's true whether we're talking about hardware or personnel issues. We need to try some things, because doing what we have always done because we've always done it that way doesn't work.

Those who ultimately shake up an industry are often outsiders who don't know any better.

I feel that one thing that a businessman can learn is do not follow a path that has already been successful. You will never be a path-breaker then.

The one lesson I've learned from technology and food is the only time you know you're doing the wrong thing is when you're doing what everyone else is doing.

Entrepreneurs don't write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they're always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.

The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

A lot of people get really stuck in this idea that everything's been done and there's nowhere left to go.

Einstein was a great advocate of the notion that good ideas look absurd at the beginning. Camus expressed a similar view.

Don't hold back in your writing. Take risks. Go ahead and tackle that crazy idea that you think will never fly, because that may be the one that makes you stand out from the crowd. Keep pushing the envelope.

I don't want a lot of guys like me who played the game. Quite frankly, I want blank canvases; I want people to come in with new ideas. I don't want the biases of their own experiences to be a part of their decision-making process.

If you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything.

There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?