Nancy Duarte Quotes

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

When you're designing and inventing the way I did, every minute of your life is put - every neuron in your brain into trying to think about the little code and how you can maybe have one less line of code and a little bit more straightforward from the beginning to the answer. And you don't have time to think about companies and products and how would I build this. So Steve Jobs and I were a very necessary pair.

The capacity to innovate - the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life - and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge.

Some things tend not to work so well for science - things that rely on substantial written contributions by key experts are a case in point - but even there I tend to keep an open mind, because it may just be a case of finding the right formula.

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.'

It's not enough to have a hacker culture anymore. You have to have a design culture, too.

Often the most important moment in the design process is figuring out what the right question is.

I believe that the ability to innovate and to be creative are teachable processes. There are ways by which people can systematically innovate or systematically become creative.

Innovation happens best when people of different backgrounds come together to solve the world's toughest challenges and, in the process, can create new jobs and opportunities. I'm hopeful that updated immigration policies will encourage entrepreneurs from around the world to help tackle these opportunities in the U.S.

Dad was an outstanding leader. He'd bring in top thinkers from a wide array of fields - how to fix the Detroit schools, for example. I watched him in these meetings. He listened and probed.

As technology increasingly takes over knowledge-based work, the cognitive skills that are central to today's education systems will remain important; but behavioral and non-cognitive skills necessary for collaboration, innovation, and problem solving will become essential as well.

I choose optimism. I hope to be a catalyst not only by providing financial resources but also by fostering a sense of possibility: encouraging top experts to collaborate across disciplines, challenge conventional thinking, and figure out ways to overcome some of the world's hardest problems.

To take on the jobs of tomorrow, students must become more than good test takers. They need to become makers who design, sketch, build, and prototype. And their classrooms will need more than a chalkboard and a set of textbooks.

One of the things that Dumbledore is always trying to do is to empower the kids to take ownership of issues and be creative and involved. That's what we see today. We need to empower America to be a creator of its solutions going forward in a new, very confusing world.

Diverse groups do best at complex problems and innovation when the facts aren't clear: each individual's perspective allows him or her to tackle challenges differently and, when stuck, rely on others' differing points of views to progress.

Being surrounded by diverse points of view pushes us beyond our comfort zones. And when people and teams bring multiple perspectives and experiences to the table, the discussions are deeper, the decision-making process is better, and the solutions are stronger.

You need to listen to the people experiencing the problems, and their ideas need to crowd out the words of the 'can't be done-ers.'

Socialcam shares Autodesk's mission of helping everybody imagine, design, and create a better world.

Having everyone get exposed to brainstorming, prototyping, thinking about a problem, that's a best practice. One of the things I love seeing is how genius people are. You'll be thinking about some area that needs improving, and then someone just comes in and gives you that little bit of energy. Free online education doesn't solve everything, but you open the window and you build on each other.

Some of my best thinking is done by others.

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end.

The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.

I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.

Design is a thinking process that starts in the head and with sketches. Thinking cannot be done by a computer.

I think the whole thing that Jamie [Hyneman] and I have in working together is that we are constantly simplifying each other's designs, and we both appreciate that the quickest and the dirtiest solution is usually the most elegant, the least expensive, and the fastest.