Michael D. Barnes Quotes

The great thing about ideas is that every new idea leads to two more new ones. It’s the opposite of a gold rush, where the more people who show up in 1849 to get that gold in California, the faster the gold runs out. Ideas are not like that; ideas breed.

You have to have an idea of what you need to do, what needs to be fixed, what can be improved, what we should now imagine together which we didn't previously imagine. And having thought of it, decide to go it. And that's the government's role.

What I teach our people is that, as a leader, you have four key roles apart from people management. First is to champion the grand vision. Two, install systems and a culture to run experiments. The third thing is to savour surprises. The fourth thing is that even a leader's ideas need to be subjected to tests.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

You can never discard too many bad ideas.

A brilliant idea without action is like Mark McGwire playing baseball without a bat.

Ideas Are The Lifeblood Of Business. Capture Every Fleeting Idea And Drive For Change.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

Never underestimate the value of an idea. Every positive idea has within its potential for success if it is managed properly.

Usage is like oxygen for ideas.

Any leader who asks the right questions of the right people has the potential to discover and develop great ideas.

Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: Take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.

I'm basically the idea person. I'm not physically involved in the production. I don't have the necessary abilities, so I go to the top people.

People seem to think that they can't come up with ideas, and they're wrong. They can and they do, but they just think of it as daydreaming, or wasting time. Kids get told not to make things up, and in my case, nobody told me long enough, or it just didn't stick.

If I have three ideas and I'm working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one.

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.

It all must start with an inspired, spontaneous idea.

Sometimes it's easy to have ideas, but somebody has to find a way to do it. Often those responsible for finding a way don't have the idea.

A team of giants needs giant pitchers who throw good ideas but every pitcher needs an outstanding catcher. Without giant catchers, the ideas of the giant pitchers may eventually disappear.

To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands.

Ideas exist in the marketplace; they are thrown out for everyone to use.

A single idea - the sudden flash of a thought - may be worth a million dollars.

If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.