Max McKeown Quotes

Culture is the sum of the values, beliefs and assumptions of human groups.

Innovation can start with wanting what does not yet exist - and finding a solution - or seeing what does not yet exist - and finding an opportunity.

Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy.

Innovation is about practical creativity - it's about making new ideas useful...

Before innovation - or practical creativity - there is insight. You must see the world differently.

As an innovator, you need to be aware of how traditions, habits and bias can act as barriers to accepting new ideas.

If there are no new ideas, there is no innovation. And if there is no creativity, there are no new ideas.

If traditional doesn't work, then traditions won't do.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.

Change is inevitable, progress is not.

Corporate strategy is usually only useful if you get people engaged with helping you to make it work.

We need to move from comparative advantage to perpetual advantage...

Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind.

Plug into the anti-obvious power of the rebel. Or get those opposing minds to plug into your purpose, to solve your problem, to reimagine your process.

The true parents of creativity are curiosity and necessity.

The psychology of individual creativity is about at least three different things. First, creativity is about thinking differently. Second, creativity is about feeling differently. Third, creativity is about focusing, or committing, differently.

Problem-insight precedes solution insight. Someone has to recognise a problem before they start to solve the problem...