Anand Mahindra Quotes

The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the wrong situations.

From a product development perspective, choosing whether a technology is disruptive at a potential moment is key.

To be an entrepreneur in Europe, there is a stigma attached to it. There's a reason why England is known as a nation of shopkeepers. Part of it is the idea that it's better to have a shop and keep it up and running than close the doors and try to do something much more significant.

When we first invested in Red Hat, it was thought to be totally insane. When we funded MySQL, it was only partly insane.

It's really rare for people to have a successful start-up in this industry without a breakthrough product. I'll take it a step further. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, 'I don't get it, I don't understand it. I think it's too weird, I think it's too unusual.'

In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.

If you're a pioneer and you come up with something that can change the world and you turn round and say 'I'm not going to share this idea with anyone,' then you only impact the few and not the many.

When someone takes their existing business and tries to transform it into something else - they fail. In technology that is often the case. Look at Kodak: it was the dominant imaging company in the world. They did fabulously during the great depression, but then wiped out the shareholders because of technological change.

The best companies in the world have all had predecessors. 'YouTube' was a dating site. You always have to evolve into something else.

In tech communities, we consider disruption the way to lead to innovation.

Innovation means taking risks, and that is where the private sector can play a role.

The true painter must be able, with the most usual things, to have the most unusual ideas.

Innovation and creativity are the juiciest parts of running a business.

Imagination plus innovation equals realization.

Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who's forging a bullet with your company's name on it. You've got one option now - to shoot first. You've got to out innovate the innovators.

A radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.

The late Richard Feynman, a superb physicist, said once as we talked about the laser that the way to tell a great idea is that, when people hear it, they say, 'Gee, I could have thought of that.'

If the technology is disruptive, on the other hand, the odds are that at the end of the transition, the leaders will have been toppled and new companies will be on top.

Innovation keeps me ahead of my competition. It means that my foes must adapt to me, not the other way around.

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that's at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter.

Ideas that most people derided as ridiculous have produced the best outcomes. Don't do the obvious thing.

The answer is the disruptive innovator, an outsider, who creates a product or service for the non-existing consumer in a non-existing market for almost no profit.

We know where most of the creativity, the innovation, the stuff that drives productivity lies - in the minds of those closest to the work.

The genuinely significant creation, whether an idea, or a work of art, or a scientific discovery, is most likely to be seen at first as erroneous, bad, or foolish. Later it may be seen as obvious, something self-evident to all. Only still later does it receive its final evaluation as a creative contribution. It seems clear no contemporary mortal can satisfactorily evaluate a creative product at the time it is formed, and this statement is increasingly true the greater the novelty of the creation.