Alexandra Stoddard Quotes

If you want to experiment, do something temporary.

One experiments and has to choose always the best results.

It's much easier to fail when you're in the pilot, early stage, when it's less expensive and you're exploring than when you're way out the door and you've spent all this money. Industry is smart: structured to have skunkworks and pilot phases.

Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting 'good enough decision making' and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model.

The reason why the Wright brothers were successful wasn't because they had the most resources, but because they understood how invention works. You have to iterate quickly, and you should be prepared to fail. Because things often don't go as planned.

Every business makes big mistakes along the way.

Just build things and find out if they work.

Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

There should of course be left a field of work for the sake of experiment but at all times one must remember that there will always remain open a possibility of err.

With software, you really can replicate and do a lot of very real and active development in parallel, and actually try it out and see what works.

If testing costs more than not testing, then don't test.

I don't see what the alternative to risk management is. If it's just getting rid of the models and instead using the smart people who can figure it out? How do you train them? What do you teach them? Do you just put them in a cockpit and let them stumble for 10 years of their life and then after that they're good at it?

You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well.

Knowledge must come through action. You can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company.

you have to play it out sometimes.

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

you must be careful never to allow doubt to paralyze you. always take the decisions you need to take, even if you're not sure you're doing the right thing. You'll never go wrong if, when you make a decision, you keep in mind an old German proverb: 'The devil is in the detail.' Remember that proverb and you'll always be able to turn a wrong decision into a right one.

Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff.

If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.

Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.

If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

Experiment is folly when experience shows the way.

When I asked you if you wanted to, I was not testing your courage. I was testing your wisdom.