Ozwald Boateng Quotes

Trend-wise, I hope to keep bringing completely new collections to the industry that will make people think and defy the norm.

We're always trying to break the boundaries of what a 'denim brand' can be, and we want to be respected for it.

When we started Skype, if you look at analyst reports, no one forecasted it as a big business. Also when Google started, it was not fashionable to be in search. It's not trying to do the obvious - that's the hard part.

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

Follow your instincts. Do the kind of writing you love to do and do best. 'Stiff' was an oddball book - I mean, a funny book about cadavers? - and I worried that it would be too unconventional. In the end, that's what has made it a success, I think.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

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

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.

You have to be willing to offend in order to make progress.

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.

There's always opposition when you do something big. I do many things that are controversial. When people see it, they love it!

All creative people want to do the unexpected.

I love a challenge, and I love challenging people's preconceptions.

To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better.

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they'll turn out to be right.

I want to work on things that aren't self-evident, to propose things that are radically different and game-changing.

There's real peril in trying to repeat yourself, and apply rules that applied to something else to a new project.

You look at any industry - you're not innovating unless people are questioning it. If you're innovating, you're doing something nobody's done before, which means you're re-writing rules, resetting boundaries, re-creating systems. And that means the traditional industry is going to question it.

Do not be afraid to offer ideas that draw opposition. Remember, if no one is against your idea, then your idea probably doesn't do anything.

Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing.

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.