Ruth Porat Quotes

When we're in the shower, when we're thinking about our idea - boy, does it sound brilliant. But the reality is that most of our ideas are actually terrible.

I'm a great believer in our ability to come up with the ideas necessary to solve the big questions. I have less confidence that we'll be able to find a consensus about which ones are right without experiment.

I don't have to come up with the best idea. It is my job to make sure that it is always the best idea that wins.

My experience in decision-making has shown that patterns are tough to break. In the military, we study an opponent, looking for gaps, flaws, or weaknesses that can be exploited. Successful leaders at all levels in all disciplines conduct this kind of analysis.

My job is to put as many ideas out there as possible every day. Some of them will get traction, some won't - some of them shouldn't.

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away.

Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.

Most people don't grab the right ideas or don't know what to do with them.

I usually have two or three ideas floating around. When I have free time, the one I end up thinking most about is the one I end up pursuing.

Every time you create something new, there should be questions. And to me, that's a sign that you've actually done something that is transformative.

The way deals are done, every idea is looked at 50 different ways. Now, the market continues to change all the time. And we are always looking at everything in evaluating how it fits with our strategy.

I'm very knowledgeable of the challenges before me.

It's not an easy job to think creatively and then also have to think logistically.

In games, you have plans, you have strategies, and you follow them.

When you're bringing an idea to fruition, there are two distinct phases: the skeptic phase and the evangelist phase. During the first phase, you have to be willing to ask the hardest questions - is this idea worth pursuing? But once you are convinced, you flip a switch. It's about getting it done.

A finisher doesn't always mean you have to take the game deep and then bash to finish. It is all about understanding situations and then adjusting your game with the aim that you have to get the job done.

Where I get involved is that I have to sign off the money, yet when you have target one, two or three from your process I feel fine going after the No 1 target and, if it's not to be him, then number two or three.

I am the worst strategist ever.

All managers make decisions, and sometimes they are right, and sometimes people say they are wrong.

A lot of us saw Blackadder in terms of problem-solving - 'Did that work in that episode?' and so on. We were very picky.

Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business.

I'll drop something for a while, a year or maybe several years, and then pick it up again. I think that's the way successful innovators work. They keep juggling ideas, keeping them in the air, in the back of their mind, to inspire them or enable new recombinations.

You've got to be smart about tackling.

Sometimes when you chat about something, a few ideas come up, you go this way or that way in training.

I've always been an idea person, so I've always been great at having ideas, just not having the resources to make them happen.