Seth Godin Quotes

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

Finding out exactly what went wrong is key toward preventing future debacles.

Back to Microsoft days, I'm always looking for, 'OK, that's great, but what can go wrong?'

I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

Failure is Central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.

What is commonly overlooked in using the computer is the fact that the central goal of design is still to obviate failure, and thus it is critical to identify exactly how a structure may fail. The computer cannot do this by itself . . .

Risks I think are the thing that make life important and everything that you and I do is risk vs. benefit. Is there a risk to sending your kid out? Absolutely. Is there a benefit? It exceeds the risk.

Design is a thinking process that starts in the head and with sketches. Thinking cannot be done by a computer.

I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that regulators are going to be able to outsmart the bankers. So, the task of designing regulatory reform is trying to make more or less foolproof regulation and that's one of the advantages of the systemic category.

By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out.

The thing I preach constantly is do your research; build your knowledge base. Don't just go into business on a whim or a prayer - and don't think 'I'm an entrepreneur so I have to take risks'. Entrepreneurs don't take risks. They take calculated risks; only the good ones.

The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.

If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.

I like the idea that people get engaged thinking about design, about creativity. I don't see how it could possibly be bad.

Think very carefully about what you want in life. Reckon with the risks.

My hope is that design thinking becomes an innovative discipline and not just the trend of the decade. As a nation and globally, we have some of the biggest problems to solve we have ever faced. We need innovative ways to solve our problems and communicating the solutions will be paramount. Original thinking, complex problem solving, and collaboration are all important skills for our future.

We will certainly have to rethink the way in which we design and protect places where large numbers of Australians and indeed this will happen around the world.

I don't think it's a matter of going back and having a review of our process. Our process is about as thorough as there can be. Is it imperfect? Yes. Is there risk? Yes, but we start with the fact that we have an American that's being held hostage and that American's life is in danger and that's where we start. And then we proceed from there.

If the expedition had failed, which it might well have done with all hope centered in just one plane, I should still be trying to pay back my obligations.

The fundamental purpose of design thinking is to produce something that does not now exist. And so it is with integrative thinking - in the face of conflicting models, it seeks to generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a model that contains elements of each but is superior to both. So the goals are aligned completely.

I think one lesson we have to learn is that there's a lot more risk than we're giving credit to, a lot more what economist calls systematic risk.

I not only enjoy it, I think, how do you design things that are applicable to life - unless you live it?

What’s next for technology and design? A lot less thinking about technology for technology’s sake, and a lot more thinking about design. Art humanizes technology and makes it understandable. Design is needed to make sense of information overload. It is why art and design will rise in importance during this century as we try to make sense of all the possibilities that digital technology now affords.

It is a mistake to think that one limits one’s risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence.

No decision in business provides greater potential for the creation of wealth (or its destruction, come to think of it) than the choice of which innovation to back.