Elon Musk Quotes

Disruption is a critical element of the evolution of technology - from the positive and negative aspects of disruption a typical pattern emerges, as new technologies come to market and subsequently take hold.

Except in very narrow cases, where there's breakthrough science that needs patent production, worrying about competitors is a waste of time. If you can't out iterate someone who is trying to copy you, you're toast anyway.

When we look at investing, we always think about 'how defensible is this, how likely is it that somebody is going to copy this.' E-commerce tends to be something easy to copy because it's execution.

Taiwan must find its own way. We have been emphasizing too much the manufacturing business. We have to become more high-tech, more innovative, and provide more value. We can't always insist on the value of low-cost production. We have to invest more in R&D to get high-value business.

IBM isn't investing billions of dollars every year into research and development - and winning more patents than our top 10 competitors combined for more than a decade - as an academic exercise. But research is now being driven much more by what people need rather than just by what is possible.

Whether it's steamships disrupted by the railroads or railroads disrupted by the airlines, it's typically the large entrenched incumbents that are displaced by innovators.

The reality is, is that we love competition, at Apple. We think it makes us all better. But we want people to invent their own stuff.

In a knowledge economy, natural selection favors organizations that can most effectively harness and coordinate collective intellectual energy and creative capacity.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

There's an ongoing competition by global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes. The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find out new businesses that Samsung's future will hinge on.

We are not concerned about innovation shifting from the U.S. I still believe that the U.S. still has capabilities for innovation.

The world is facing a new networked, digital lifestyle, and we will ensure that Canon remains ahead of the game.

If companies don't think systemically enough - if they try to capture too much of the value - eventually, innovation moves somewhere else.

Whatever business you're in - it doesn't matter - it's going to commoditize over time. It's going to devalue. You've got to keep moving it to a higher value.

Don't be the best. Be the only.

... whatever business you're in, it doesn't matter, it's going to commoditize over time, it's going to devalue, you've got to keep moving it to a higher value. Keep going to a higher value in whatever it is that you do and force yourself and force the organization to always do it ahead of time

Are you Englishmen, or only Goths and Vandals? This is the Patent Office, the depository of the ingenuity and invention of the American nation, in which the whole civilized world is interested. Would you destroy it? If so, fire away! and let the charge pass through my body!

Patents should be for technological innovations. So a program for a new machine tool should be patentable but a non-technological innovation, such as grammar-checking software for a word-processor, should not be.

Patents have not been a positive force in stimulating innovation at Cisco. Competition has been the motivator; bringing new products to market in a timely manner is critical. Everything we have done to create new products would have been done even if we could not obtain patents

The companies that can afford to do basic research (and can't afford not to) are ones that dominate their markets. … It's cheap insurance, since failing to do basic research guarantees that the next major advance will be owned by someone else.

Like it or not, the United States is a revolutionary power. Whether the government is trying to overthrow foreign dictators is almost irrelevant. American society is about the most revolutionary force on the planet. The Internet is more subversive than the CIA in its prime. The dynamism of American Society is constantly creating new businesses, new technologies, new ideas and new social models. These innovations travel, and they make trouble when they do.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

People are going to copy your product if you build great stuff. Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn't make it Google.

I don't invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

Unless you stay focused on innovation, you can be disintermediated.