Gary Hamel Quotes

You know that I'm always a proponent of doing things differently.

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.

You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

All I know is, I'm trying to do things that are a little different whenever I can.

I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

When you're building a show from the ground up, there are no answers or wrong move, because there's no bible.

I think a lot of brands reach a point where they say, 'We kind of have a formula - we've got it made.' Our formula is there's no formula.

When I've tried to reinvent the wheel, I get bashed for not doing the familiar things.

I'd rather experiment than follow the same formula. I'm a curious person. It's gotten me into trouble, but I say, 'Why not? Let's try it.'

My job is to have new ideas and take risks every day, so I'm always looking forward to the next thing being done or making the next thing that I haven't yet gotten to. That's sort of the constant in my life.

In order to innovate, you have to experiment.

My view is there's no bad time to innovate.

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

In life, a lot of great ideas sound insane or absurd at first.

Answers are not enough, students should be encouraged to ask questions and explore alternatives to the norm. Entrepreneurship and invention are the backbone of the new economy, yet I doubt they get more than a nod in economics courses.

Our biggest goal is to continue to force ourselves to always start our creative work on a white page and not take advantage of past successes and challenging ourselves.

My methodology is not knowing what I'm doing and making that work for me.

I like pushing boundaries.

Part of being innovative in government is sometimes not trying to plot out the last chapter of the book, but to be open and see what comes back.

All creative people want to do the unexpected.

From an early age I didn't buy into the value systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity, friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable was much more interesting.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.