John Maeda Quotes

I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.

Confidence in the human capacity for problem solving, for invention, for innovation.

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

I think I was always inspired by seeing a problem, and finding a solution.

I was just taught very early that if I didn't solve problems, I was headed for a very dark path. Problems were everywhere. Now, even if there are no problems, I look for problems. I'm like, 'You know what? I don't like the way this spoon works. I want to design a new spoon.'

We're always looking for candidates that have new approaches to problems.

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done-men who are creative, inventive, and discovers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

Only creativity can see past problems to find solutions. This holds true for every area of life.

Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.

Creating is no problem - problem solving is not creating.

How do we attack important problems? Pose the right question.

We in government should learn to look at our country with the eyes of the entrepreneur, seeing possibilities where others see only problems

Learn to use your brain power. Critical thinking is the key to creative problem solving in business.

Lateral thinking... is the process of using information to bring about creativity and insight restructuring. Lateral thinking can be learned, practised and used. It is possible to acquire skill in it just as it is possible to acquire skill in mathematics.

The intellectual equipment needed for the job of the future is an ability to define problems, quickly assimilate relevant data, conceptualize and reorganize the information, make deductive and inductive leaps with it, ask hard questions about it, discuss findings with colleagues, work collaboratively to find solutions and then convince others.

When you are failing, you are forced to be creative, to dig deep and think, night and day.

To complicate things in new ways, that is really very easy; but to see things in new ways, that is difficult and that is why genius is so rare.

To be creative, a person has to internalize the entire system that makes creativity possible. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.

[My father] advised me to sit every few months in my reading chair for an entire evening, close my eyes and try to think of new problems to solve. I took his advice very seriously and have been glad ever since that he did.

If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, What if I did the opposite? Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are.

If you are creative enough to imagine a problem, you're clever enough to discover a solution.

The natural tendency of children is to solve problems, but we try to indoctrinate them with facts, which they are supposed to feed back, and then we fail them. And that's child abuse. And you should never raise children that way. You should cultivate and encourage their natural tendencies to create solutions to the problems around them.

If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.

So much of what we try to do is get to a point where the solution seems inevitable: you know, you think "of course it's that way, why would it be any other way?" It looks so obvious, but that sense of inevitability in the solution is really hard to achieve.