Creative Problem Quotes

If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.

I pride myself on being able to create mismatches. That's what I've done my whole life.

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can't get creative and find alternate solutions if they don't listen to each other. There's a lot of arguing and justifying.

When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.

When I am putting looks together, I dare myself to make something work. I always look for the most interesting silhouette or something that's a little off, but I have to figure it out. I have to make it me. I think that's the thrill in fashion.

That's my takeaway from 'Scream' - I know I can fit in dog doors. You have to jimmy your body in a certain position and really hope you're not wearing something super fancy.

See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

As a kid, I might have been psycho, I guess, but I used to throw golf balls in the trees and try and somehow make par from them. I thought that was fun.

Successful entrepreneurs may hate hierarchies and structures and try to destroy them. They may garner the disapproval of MBAs for their creativity and wildness. But they have antennae in their heads. When they walk down the street anywhere in the world, they have their antennae out, evaluating how what they see can relate back to what they are doing. It might be packaging, a word, a poem, or even something in a completely different business.

Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.

I needed to understand the spirit of a tall building, what makes it important, what should I try to achieve in a tall building. It became a very interesting problem, something that I like very much.

I don't view myself as a practitioner of a particular skill or method. I'm constantly looking at what's the most interesting problem that I could possibly work on. I really try to figure out what sort of scientist I need to be in order to solve the problem I'm interested in solving.

Creativity, not money, is used to solve problems.

I was actually a fruitarian at that point in time. I ate only fruit. Now I'm a garbage can like everyone else. And we were about three months late in filing a fictitious business name so I threatened to call the company Apple Computer unless someone suggested a more interesting name by five o'clock that day. Hoping to stimulate creativity. And it stuck. And that's why we're called Apple.

If you're clever enough and creative enough to get a good film made, then you should be clever enough and creative enough to find ways to get it out there, one being something like Jameson First Shot.

We started Airbnb because, like many across the U.S. and in New York, we were struggling to pay our rent and decided to open up our living room to fellow artists coming to town for a design conference. Sharing our apartment allowed us to stay in our home and start our company.

We are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.

If you think something is impossible, don't disturb the person who is doing it!

I simply think things through, and I look at problems. One thing I pride myself on is the ability to connect unconnected thoughts and come up with new, unique thoughts.

‎We need to become more unreasonable but in an intelligent way.

I came up with the Enveloper when I was 20 and it took my dad and me several months to develop the initial concept into a working model.

Companies have too many experts who block innovation. True innovation really comes from perpendicular thinking.