Thomas Kuhn Quotes

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

I've always been interested in people who think out of their time, and I have this passion, actually, for science. I'm just so enormously interested in how, when you think of these revolutionary ideas, other people get threatened, especially if you are different.

Mainstream science starts as heresy.

I want something completely new and different to happen, and lots of it. Stuff that makes us change the way we think about a market or the world. Something that inspires a new generation of crazy startups doing crazy things.

Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure.

Don't underestimate the power of your vision to change the world. Whether that world is your office, your community, an industry or a global movement, you need to have a core belief that what you contribute can fundamentally change the paradigm or way of thinking about problems.

To innovate is not to reform.

Big ideas we tend to like are the ones that seem impossible or crazy.

One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.

Historic opportunities are missed because we fixate on what folks say they want. And what folks say they want in business and politics is limited to what they believe is possible.

People who have a new idea often just stop having an old idea.

The innovator, however, must in the first place be discontented, he must doubt the value of what he is doing or question the accepted ways of doing it. And secondly, he must be prepared to take fresh paths, to venture into fields where he is by no means expert. This is true, at least, of major forms of innovation; they make it possible for other men to be expert, but are not themselves forms of expertise

In the old days, you would chastise people for reinventing the wheel. Now we beg, 'Oh, please, please reinvent the wheel.'

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?

Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma if you're right. And if you're really lucky, you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation.

Pure innovation is more gross than error.

As entrepreneurs, we often get pressured into hiring an industry executive. While it's good to hire people with experience, it can also be a stumbling block because they think about the business the same way everyone else does.

I think a lot of people study the rules too much and then don't know how to be creative.

Changing the game is a mindset.

My view is there's no bad time to innovate.

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