Dean Kamen Quotes

To invent is to discern, to choose.

Everything has been thought of before... the real problem is to think of it again.

Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions

The best creative solutions don't come from finding good answers to the questions that are presented... They come from inventing new questions!

In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.

If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

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.'

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.

It's not enough to tell people to be creative; they need to know how, and what to create.

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box.

Creating something is all about problem-solving.

Use creativity and storytelling as your main muscle instead of smartness.

We should have more invention.

The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, 'why not?'

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

I enjoy thinking about ways to create something that other people have not even thought about, something no one has managed to achieve.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change.