Edmund Phelps Quotes

Efficiency innovations arise in industries that already exist. They provide existing goods and services at much lower costs. They are not empowering. Efficiency innovators become the low cost providers within an existing framework.

We're reviewing everything to see how we can do it better, faster, and more efficiently.

Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.

Technology is a continuum. It's constantly getting lower-cost and easier to use, and you see that, and that's true with our company.

It is processes that are important.

I believe there are a lot of inefficiencies in the way technical innovation happens.

Productivity growth, however it occurs, has a disruptive side to it. In the short term, most things that contribute to productivity growth are very painful.

An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better.

Continuous productivity manifests itself as an environment where the evolving tools and culture make it possible to innovate more and faster than ever, with significantly improved execution.

Technology-fueled change is happening so fast that even a six-month-old process could be outdated. Saying this is the way it's always been done not only makes you sound lazy and resistant to change, but it could make your boss wonder why you haven't tried to improve things on your own.

The breakthrough innovations come when the tension is greatest and the resources are most limited. That's when people are actually a lot more open to rethinking the fundamental way they do business.

There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.

New standards for safety are now in place and Canada has helped provide tools and techniques that were needed. Technologies like these are innovative and represent great achievements for us.

My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business.

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

Reinventing the wheel is sometimes the right thing, when the result is the radial tire.

Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don't get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new.

If you want to bring down the prices of healthcare and education, the answer will be more innovation, more technology, which will then have the effect of freaking everybody out and saying, 'Oh, my God, you're going to kill all the jobs.'

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

People can come to me, and no matter how expert they are, I can virtually always see a way of doing something better.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

There is a constant need for new systems and new software.

The more you eliminate the inefficient use of information, the better it is for productivity.

Sometimes it's more difficult to achieve a 10% cost reduction than it is to tell people they have to achieve 50%. Small incremental steps block your view of doing something fundamentally different.

I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature. For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration.