Henry Petroski Quotes

Disruption is a critical element of the evolution of technology - from the positive and negative aspects of disruption a typical pattern emerges, as new technologies come to market and subsequently take hold.

Unsurprisingly, the most vocal opponents of new technologies are those who dominated the old.

If you want to really change something, do not try to fight the existing reality. create a new reality.

This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.

The status quo is never news, only challenges to it.

I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and wondrous, new technology where you see it, and you're like, 'Wow, how did that even happen? How is that possible?'

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.

Whenever culture has gone through a radical change, as ours has - from industrial age to information age - there are people who will deny that things have changed; they resist it and refuse to change.

When you have a model that's worked very well, it's very hard to change.

Innovation and disruption are the hallmarks of the technology world, and hardly a moment passes when we are not thinking, doing, or talking about these topics.

Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.

Change is terrifying for people who feel immune to it by virtue of status, divine appointment, or imagined irreplaceability.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

There are people and interests that do not want change. It is not in their interest for this system to change.

France has chosen to ignore the great transformation of the 21st century and cultivate a [culture of] status quo and rigidity.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

When push comes to shove, the status quo is a very powerful force.

Innovation never comes from the established institutions.

Every new theory encounters opposition and rejection at first. The adherents of the old, accepted doctrine object to the new theory, refuse it recognition, and declare it to be mistaken. Years, even decades, must pass before it succeeds in supplanting the old one. A new generation must grow up before its victory is decisive.

[Independent Federal] agencies, like other bureaucracies don’t like being transformed.. They have cultures and they want to preserve those cultures.

As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction.

People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.

Many people, companies, and organizations are trying to protect the past at any cost. We see this regularly in business as the incumbent vs. innovator fight, but I think it's more profound than that. It's literally a difference in point of view.