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7105eab
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proposer of any useful project that might be supposed to raise one's reputation." So he put himself "as much as I could out of sight" and gave credit for the idea to his friends. This method worked so well that "I ever after practiced it on such occasions." People will eventually give you the credit, he noted, if you don't try to claim it at the time. "The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid."
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Walter Isaacson |
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c629d87
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The tongue of a woodpecker can extend more than three times the length of its bill. When not in use, it retracts into the skull and its cartilage-like structure continues past the jaw to wrap around the bird's head and then curve down to its nostril. In addition to digging out grubs from a tree, the long tongue protects the woodpecker's brain. When the bird smashes its beak repeatedly into tree bark, the force exerted on its head is ten tim..
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Walter Isaacson |
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9f0f18f
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Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. " I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story."
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design
innovation
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Walter Isaacson |
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7772161
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Picasso had a saying--'good artists copy, great artists steal
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Walter Isaacson |
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7d7697e
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Leonardo's relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it--to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different.
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Walter Isaacson |
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c2e0b80
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The next phase of the Digital Revolution will bring even more new methods of marrying technology with the creative industries, such as media, fashion, music, entertainment, education, literature, and the arts. Much of the first round of innovation involved pouring old wine--books, newspapers, opinion pieces, journals, songs, television shows, movies--into new digital bottles. But new platforms, services, and social networks are increasingly..
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Walter Isaacson |
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981956c
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innovation resides where art and science connect is not new. Leonardo da Vinci was the exemplar of the creativity that flourishes when the humanities and sciences interact. When Einstein was stymied while working out General Relativity, he would pull out his violin and play Mozart until he could reconnect to what he called the harmony of the spheres.
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Walter Isaacson |
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eb6ce3e
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Knowing that great conceptions are worth little without precision execution
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Walter Isaacson |
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a03e8ef
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up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve.
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Walter Isaacson |
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978254f
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A physicist is one who's concerned with the truth," he later said. "An engineer is one who's concerned with getting the job done."
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Walter Isaacson |
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690d597
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When a person can take pleasure in marching in step to a piece of music it is enough to make me despise him. He has been given his big brain only by mistake.
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Walter Isaacson |
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fffed08
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A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way," Einstein once said. "But," he hastened to add, "intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience."
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Walter Isaacson |
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5e11ae9
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He wished to please everybody," Franklin later said of Keith, "and having little to give, he gave expectations."
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Walter Isaacson |
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12584c1
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Falling in love is not the most stupid thing that people do," Einstein scribbled on the letter, "but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it."
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Walter Isaacson |
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9d70351
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Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not."*"
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Walter Isaacson |
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b27b63c
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Not since the original Mac had a clarity of product vision so propelled a company into the future. " If anybody was ever wondering why Apple is on the earth, I would hold up this as a good example" --
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product
visionary
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Walter Isaacson |
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0237efc
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Leonardo became known in Milan not only for his talents but also for his good looks, muscular build, and gentle personal style. "He was a man of outstanding beauty and infinite grace," Vasari said of him. "He was striking and handsome, and his great presence brought comfort to the most troubled soul."
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Walter Isaacson |
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8d91de6
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When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.
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Walter Isaacson |
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54e59e4
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Those who are in love with practice without theoretical knowledge are like the sailor who goes onto a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whither he is going," he wrote in 1510. "Practice must always be founded on sound theory."11"
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Walter Isaacson |
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56cb1e8
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1. It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe. 2. To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action--the most amiable excellence in a rational being. 3. To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of sudden..
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Walter Isaacson |
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3e41049
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It's a complex song, and it's fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth and finally created it over a few months. Lennon was always my favorite Beatle. [ He laughs as Lennon stops during the first take and makes the band go back and revise a chord.] Did you hear that little detour they took? It didn't work, so they went back and started from where they were. It's so raw in this version. It actually makes the soun..
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maturation
hard-work
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Walter Isaacson |
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aee8073
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The other sins on his list were, in order: seeming uninterested, speaking too much about your own life, prying for personal secrets ("an unpardonable rudeness"), telling long and pointless stories ("old folks are most subject to this error, which is one chief reason their company is so often shunned"), contradicting or disputing someone directly, ridiculing or railing against things except in small witty doses ("it's like salt, a little of ..
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Walter Isaacson |
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eb6e8b8
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Imagination is more important than knowledge.
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Walter Isaacson |
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4e42c1e
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One day someone called the Institute and asked to speak to a particular dean. When his secretary said that the dean wasn't available, the caller hesitantly asked for Einstein's home address. That was not possible to give out, he was informed. The caller's voice then dropped to a whisper. "Please don't tell anybody," he said, "but I am Dr. Einstein, I'm on my way home, and I've forgotten where my house is."40"
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Walter Isaacson |
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b7353bf
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the Macintosh lacked a fan, another example of Jobs's dogmatic stubbornness. Fans, he felt, detracted from the calm of a computer. This caused many component failures and earned the Macintosh the nickname "the beige toaster," which did not enhance its popularity."
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Walter Isaacson |
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e0a7f22
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he never finished any of the works he began because, so sublime was his idea of art, he saw faults even in the things that to others seemed miracles.
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Walter Isaacson |
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99966a6
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In other words, the idea for the iPad actually came before, and helped to shape, the birth of the iPhone.
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Walter Isaacson |
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792ae9e
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Einstein was asked what the next war would look like. "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought," he answered, "but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth--rocks."
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Walter Isaacson |
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34bd3a3
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This inability to ground his fantasies in reality has generally been regarded as one of Leonardo's major failings. Yet in order to be a true visionary, one has to be willing to overreach and to fail some of the time. Innovation requires a reality distortion field. The things he envisioned for the future often came to pass, even if it took a few centuries. Scuba gear, flying machines, and helicopters now exist. Suction pumps now drain swamps..
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Walter Isaacson |
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7215d00
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Once a year Jobs took his most valuable employees on a retreat, which he called " The Top 100." They were picked based on a simple guideline: the people you would bring if you could take only a hundred people with you on a lifeboat to your next company. At the end of each retreat, Jobs would stand in front of the whiteboard( he loved whiteboards because they gave him complete control of a situation and they engendered focus) and ask, " What..
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competition
camraderie
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Walter Isaacson |
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37c32f0
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In fact, these terms devised by Franklin are the ones we still use today, along with other neologisms that he coined to describe his findings: battery, charged, neutral, condense, and conductor.
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Walter Isaacson |
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c07530a
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5,000
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Walter Isaacson |
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ece1986
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Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,
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Walter Isaacson |
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005f459
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By then Einstein had finally discovered what was fundamental about America: it can be swept by waves of what may seem, to outsiders, to be dangerous political passions but are, instead, passing sentiments that are absorbed by its democracy and righted by its constitutional gyroscope. McCarthyism had died down, and Eisenhower had proved a calming influence. "God's own country becomes stranger and stranger," Einstein wrote Hans Albert that Ch..
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Walter Isaacson |
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92ed216
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Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, "awoke one morning and found myself famous." Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at thr..
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Walter Isaacson |
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c7e6004
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Think Different
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Walter Isaacson |
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78ea606
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The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and "People who are serious about software should make their own hardware."
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Walter Isaacson |
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b6b83cb
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Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face to face meetings. " There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,"he said."Thats crazy, Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say ' Wow, and soon your cooking up ..
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collaboration
networking
creativity
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Walter Isaacson |
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145ac7f
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Franklin and his petition were roundly denounced by the defenders of slavery, most notably Congressman James Jackson of Georgia, who declared on the House floor that the Bible had sanctioned slavery and, without it, there would be no one to do the hard and hot work on plantations.
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Walter Isaacson |
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2a8e88e
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Bob Iger, Disney's chief operating officer, had to step in and do damage control. He was as sensible and solid as those around him were volatile. His background was in television; he had been president of the ABC network, which was acquired in 1996 by Disney. His reputation was as an corporate suit, and he excelled at deft management, but he also had a sharp eye for talent, a good-humored ability to understand people, and a quiet flair that..
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management-and-leadership
networking-skills
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Walter Isaacson |
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9f8259f
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Franklin was worried that his fondness for conversation and eagerness to impress made him prone to "prattling, punning and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company." Knowledge, he realized, "was obtained rather by the use of the ear than of the tongue." So in the Junto, he began to work on his use of silence and gentle dialogue."
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Walter Isaacson |
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2f72b89
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So he grew up not only with a sense of having once been abandoned, but also with a sense that he was special. In his own mind, that was more important in the formation of his personality.
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Walter Isaacson |
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6cf0dfc
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Since the mathematicians have grabbed hold of the theory of relativity, I myself no longer understand it.
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Walter Isaacson |
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e8d232d
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Most of the successful innovators and entrepreneurs in this book had one thing in common: they were product people. They cared about, and deeply understood, the engineering and design. They were not primarily marketers or salesmen or financial types; when such folks took over companies, it was often to the detriment of sustained innovation. "When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just t..
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Walter Isaacson |