200 Quotes About Innovation in Business

Innovation drives the success of businesses, shaping industries and redefining possibilities. In this article, you’ll find insightful quotes from thought leaders and innovators that explore the importance, challenges, and transformative power of innovation in business.

The Nature of Innovation

Innovation is the foundation of progress in business. This section explores the essence of innovation and how it shapes new opportunities and growth.

1. “Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way.” – Michael Vance
2. “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” – Albert Einstein
3. “Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.” – Watts Humprey
4. “Innovation is anything, but business as usual.” – Anonymous
5. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” – Abraham Maslow
6. “Ideas are useless unless used.” – T. Levitt
7. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” – Thomas Edison
8. “Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” – Alfred North Whitehead
9. “Innovation is the calling card of the future.” – Anna Eshoo
10. “What is the calculus of innovation? The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: Knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives economic growth.” – William Brody
11. “Innovation takes birth in sync with the evolution of customer’s expectations and demands or vice versa. Either way, organizations around the world have to continually innovate themselves and keep up with the people’s wants. The failure to do so or being indifferent to your customer’s need will make your competitors win. And then suddenly, customers become indifferent to you- a high-risk gamble to play at.” – Ketan Kapoor
12. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” – Steve Jobs
13. “The best ideas don’t come when you’re rushing. Create space for deep thinking.” – Allison Dunn
14. “Innovation is progress in the face of tradition.” – Divad
15. “Most innovation involves doing the things we do every day a little bit better rather than creating something completely new and different.” – Darin
16. “Innovation is more likely to come from a person who sits down and does the same thing every single day until they become an expert than from a person who sits down once because they feel inspired.” – Stacy Caprio
17. “A dream will not become an innovation if there is no realization.” – Ciputra
18. “Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.” – Barbara Corcoran
19. “Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.” – Thomas Dewar
20. “It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” – Roger von Oech
21. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Albert Einstein
22. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Innovation and Leadership

Effective leaders know that innovation is key to success. Here, we look at quotes that highlight how leadership and innovation go hand in hand.

22. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
23. “We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.” – Jeff Bezos
24. “Innovation is the unrelenting drive to break the status quo and develop anew where few have dared to go.” – Steven Jeffes
25. “I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” – Jeff Bezos
26. “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” – Steve Jobs
27. “I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.” – Steve Jobs
28. “The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things, it is the human mind, the human spirit, the human imagination, and our faith in the future.” – Steve Forbes
29. “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” – Howard Aiken
30. “I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.” – Sam Walton
31. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs
32. “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently; they’re not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs
33. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
34. “Be an innovator, not an imitator.” – Audrey Carballo
35. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw
36. “To stay ahead in innovation, look at horizontal industries and the ones leading your current industry, someone is always doing something new.” – Jeff Butler
37. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
38. “Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep. Give people the room they need.” – William McKnight
39. “There’s always an element of chance and you must be willing to live with that element. If you insist on certainty, you will paralyze yourself.” – J.P. Getty
40. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – George Patton
41. “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” – Margaret Heffernan
42. “I want to put a ding in the universe.” – Steve Jobs
43. “The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain
44. “Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
45. “I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” – Miles Davis
46. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
47. “Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who’s going to have a great idea.” – Sam Walton
48. “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” – Jonathan Swift

Innovation and Change

Change is a constant in business, and innovation drives it. This section examines the connection between innovation and adapting to ever-evolving environments.

49. “Without change, there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.” – William Pollard
50. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes
51. “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke
52. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” – Albert Einstein
53. “Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” – Winston Churchill
54. “We must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.” – Winston Churchill
55. “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.” – Winston Churchill
56. “Changes call for innovation, and innovation leads to progress.” – Li Keqiang
57. “When a competitor starts copying your features, you can pretty much write them off completely, as it means they ran out of innovative ideas.” – Cliff Lerner
58. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein
59. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building on the new.” – Socrates
60. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
61. “The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo.” – Bob Iger
62. “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” – William Shedd
63. “Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not yet understood.” – Henry Miller
64. “Modern society is built upon two things: truth, which is discovered, and innovation, which is created.” – True Tamplin
65. “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
66. “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” – Charles Kettering
67. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” – Bertrand Russell
68. “Systems die; instincts remain.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
69. “Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.” – Peter Drucker
70. “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” – Emile Chartier
71. “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Role of Failure and Mistakes in Innovation

Failure is an inevitable part of innovation. This section highlights how mistakes and setbacks contribute to growth and breakthroughs in business.

72. “There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” – Brene Brown
73. “Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
74. “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.” – Thomas Watson
75. “If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” – Henry Ford
76. “Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction.” – Pablo Picasso
77. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” – Steve Jobs
78. “The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites. – Carl Jung
79. “99% of success is built on failure.” – Charles Kettering
80. “Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
81. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.” – Steve Jobs
82. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” – Steve Jobs
83. “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.” – Steve Jobs
84. “Innovation comes from saying NO to 1000 things.” – Steve Jobs
85. “Don’t be afraid to take big steps when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” – David Lloyd George
86. “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” – Woody Allen
87. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
88. “When looking to innovate—fail forward. Innovation can be a chaotic process, embrace it and learn from your failures.” – Luke Wester
89. “What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Fail. Try again. Change the world.” – Simon Sinek
90. “For my first show at ‘SNL’, I wrote a Bill Clinton sketch, and during our read-through, it wasn’t getting any laughs. This weight of embarrassment came over me, and I felt like I was sweating from my spine out. But I realized, ‘Okay, that happened, and I did not die.’ You’ve got to experience failure to understand that you can survive it.” – Tina Fey
91. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” – Wayne Gretzky
92. “They did not know it was impossible so they did it.” – Mark Twain
93. “Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they (creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.” – Frank G. Goble
94. “The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.” – Alfred North Whitehead
95. “You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.” – John Barrymore
96. “There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost.” – Martha Graham

The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Innovation

Entrepreneurs are often at the forefront of innovation. This section reflects on how the entrepreneurial mindset fosters creativity and new ideas.

97. “Innovation is the ability to convert ideas into invoices.” – L. Duncan
98. “Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service.” – Peter Drucker
99. “Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.” – Elon Musk
100. “Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” – Milan Kundera
101. “I became an entrepreneur because I wanted to innovate to improve people’s lives, not to become a pesky, spam-crazy nuisance.” – Cliff Lerner
102. “We don’t have a traditional strategy process, planning process like you’d find in traditional technology companies. It allows Google to innovate very, very quickly, which I think is a real strength of the company.” – Eric Schmidt
103. “Your idea isn’t what makes you an entrepreneur—your execution is. The marketplace doesn’t reward potential; it rewards those who take action, test, and refine until they create real value.” – Allison Dunn
104. “I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” – Steve Jobs
105. “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Steve Jobs
106. “Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.” – Elon Musk
107. “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” – Steve Jobs
108. “By questioning all the aspects of our business, we continuously inject improvement and innovation into our culture.” – Michael Dell
109. “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Antony Jay
110. “Silence is your ally in thinking. Let your best ideas rise to the surface.” – Allison Dunn
111. “Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Steve Jobs
112. “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” – Wayne Gretzky
113. “Innovation-any new idea-by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.” – Warren Bennis
114. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” – Abraham Maslow
115. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” – Johann Goethe
116. “I will act as if what I do will make a difference.” – William James
117. “Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.” – Robert M. Hayes
118. “No matter how well you perform, there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.” – Sir Laurence Olivier
119. “If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it.” – Gordon MacKenzie
120. “Innovation is change that unlocks new value.” – Jamie Notter
121. “If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.” – Arthur Koestler

Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is the heart of innovation. In this section, we explore how creative thinking leads to innovative solutions and business breakthroughs.

120. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” – Theodore Levitt
121. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
122. “Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way.” – Tom Freston
123. “We have approximately 60,000 thoughts in a day. Unfortunately, 95% of them are thoughts we had the day before.” – Deepak Chopra
124. “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
125. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” – Brene Brown
126. “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
127. “You can expect no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.” – Carl Jung
128. “Innovation takes birth in sync with the evolution of customer’s expectations and demands or vice versa. Either way, organizations around the world have to continually innovate themselves and keep up with the people’s wants.” – Ketan Kapoor
129. “There’s a way to do it better. Find it.” – Thomas Edison
130. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” – John Steinbeck
131. “What the world needs most are dreamers that do.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach
132. “Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” – George Lois
133. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling
134. “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
135. “When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.” – Phil Knight

The Impact of Innovation on Society

Innovation isn’t just about business; it has a profound impact on society. This section explores how innovation changes the world around us for the better.

136. “Innovation is the central issue in economic prosperity.” – Michael Porter
137. “The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things.. it is the human mind, the human spirit, the human imagination, and our faith in the future.” – Steve Forbes
138. “Dreamers are mocked as impractical. The truth is they are the most practical, as their innovations lead to progress and a better way of life for all of us.” – Robin Sharma
139. “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
140. “The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.” – Thomas Edison
141. “The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.” – Unknown
142. “Necessity is the mother of invention.” – Unknown
143. “We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.” – John Culkin
144. “There’s no good idea that cannot be improved on.” – Michael Eisner
145. “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Steve Jobs
146. “Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.” – Peter Drucker
147. “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” – Voltaire
148. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building on the new.” – Socrates
149. “You can’t allow tradition to get in the way of innovation. There’s a need to respect the past, but it’s a mistake to revere your past.” – Bob Iger
150. “About 95% of new products fail.” – Clayton Christensen
151. “What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Fail. Try again. Change the world.” – Simon Sinek
152. “Modern society is built upon two things: truth, which is discovered, and innovation, which is created.” – True Tamplin
153. “Never confuse motion with action.” – Ernest Hemingway
154. “The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present – the decline will be fast.” – Peter Drucker
155. “The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
156. “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
157. “Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of making progress.” – Niels Bohr
158. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

The Process of Innovation

Innovation isn’t just about ideas, but how those ideas are brought to life. This section delves into the practical steps and processes that drive innovation.

159. “Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries.” – Margaret J. Wheatley
160. “If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.” – Steven Johnson
161. “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” – Peter Drucker
162. “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.” – Steve Jobs
163. “What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.” – C. Wynett
164. “Swipe from the best, then adapt.” – Tom Peters
165. “Don’t be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” – David Lloyd George
166. “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” – Jonas Salk
167. “Your mistakes aren’t failures—they’re your tuition for future success.” – Allison Dunn
168. “Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.” – Steve Jobs
169. “What is the calculus of innovation? The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: Knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives economic growth.” – William Brody
170. “Most innovation involves doing the things we do every day a little bit better rather than creating something completely new and different.” – Darin
171. “Innovation-any new idea-by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.” – Warren Bennis
172. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” – Albert Einstein
173. “The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.” – Alfred North Whitehead
174. “Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – William Pollard
175. “Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.” – Peter Drucker

Overcoming Challenges in Innovation

Innovation is not without its obstacles. Here, we explore quotes that reflect the perseverance and problem-solving required to innovate successfully.

175. “Innovation by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.” – Warren Bennis
176. “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.” – Steven Pressfield
177. “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” – Anais Nin
178. “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
179. “Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller
180. “The only thing stronger than all the armies of the world is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
181. “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” – Ancient Chinese Proverb
182. “Innovation survives only when people believe in their own ideas.” – Levo League
183. “Short cuts make long delays.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
184. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” – Rita Mae Brown
185. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
186. “You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.” – Charles Buxton
187. “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Innovation and Visionary Thinking

Visionary thinking leads to groundbreaking innovations. This section focuses on how foresight and bold thinking have shaped the most successful innovations in business.

188. “If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” – Alfred Nobel
189. “What is now proved was once only imagined.” – William Blake
190. “You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” – Albert Einstein
191. “Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” – Dr. Albert, Szent Györgyi
192. “Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.” – George Lucas
193. “Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.” – J. K. Rowling
194. “There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
195. “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” – Peter F. Drucker
196. “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.” – Steve Jobs
197. “Remember, a dead fish can float down a stream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.” – W.C. Fields
198. “A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” – Antoine Saint-Exupery
199. “Truly creative people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.” – Alan Cohen
200. “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” – Steve Jobs
201. “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.” – Steve Jobs
202. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” – Steve Jobs
203. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Alan Kay
204. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein
205. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Albert Einstein
206. “The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain
207. “I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. What is reality? Nothing but a collective hunch.” – Lily Tomlin

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