Edward de Bono Quotes

I mean, the general rule is if you're not prepared to make a mistake, you're not going to make much progress.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.

Pure innovation is more gross than error.

The greatest challenge to most innovation centers around the world is many nations' punitive attitudes towards failure. In most of the world, if your first business fails, no one will work with you again. But, trial and error is the genesis of innovation.

Embrace error: Create an atmosphere in which prudent risk taking is strongly encouraged.

If you never want to be criticized, for goodness sake don't do anything new.

If everything you do works, then you're not taking many risks and probably aren't innovating either.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.

I have a theory that the only original things we ever do are mistakes.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

It is the essence of innovation to fail most of the time.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Your initial idea may or may not work, but you have to remember that a failed idea is nothing but a stepping stone to a bigger success.

If something works, you shouldn't do it again. We want to do something that is new, original - something where there's a good chance of failure.

With innovation, there is always risk.

I think it's also important to show that failure is a part of the process. It can sometimes be the end goal. People are very obsessed with building useful things and I think often that also stops people from getting started.

The easiest thing is to create something no one has ever seen before. There's a reason no one's ever seen it - because someone tried it, and it didn't work in the real world.