Eric E. Schmidt – DAN REICH

A Collection of Quotes – Volume 1

I typically use this blog for somewhat coherent thoughts. When I see things I like and don’t have time to write about them, they either make it to my tumblr account, or to my twitter & Facebook update.

Here are some of those quotes from the past few months:

“creativity, which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value, more often than not, comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things”

— Sir Ken Robinson, Schools Kill Creativity, minute 13:28

“You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready”

— Eric Schmidt’s Keynote Speech, Carnegie Mellon Graduation 2009

“Trust matters in a networked world. Trust is your most important currency”

— Eric Schmidt’s Keynote Speech, Carnegie Mellon Graduation 2009

“Real competition comes from the sport of business.”

— Mark Cuban – The Sport of Business

“The goal is not to be better than the other man, but to be better than your previous self.”

— An old Hindu proverb

“You see things and say ‘Why?’ I dream things and say ‘Why not?’”

— George Bernard Shaw

“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”

— Nicollo Machiavelli

“Ranting is how you get the sludge out of the way so the genius can slide out on greased skids.”

— Joel D Canfield

Any of these worth anything to you?

The Entrepreneurial Snowball Effect

Starting a business is very hard. In a matter of 24 hours your emotions can range from thinking that your business will be the next Google, to thinking how moronic you were for even contemplating the idea in the first place.

In order to start a successful business, I believe you need two components above all else.

1. A Team
Collective knowledge is more powerful than any one individual. But I believe Eric Schmidt puts it best:

“How should you behave? Well, do things in a group. Don’t do things by yourself. Groups are stronger, groups are faster. None of us is as smart as all of us…..” – Eric Schmidt, CEO Google.

2. The Entrepreneurial Snowball Effect
Beyond having a team, you need a group of people that can feed off of each other. People that together, build continual momentum regardless of the challenges by feeding motivation to and from others in the group. If one person starts some momentum, others can build and build upon it until slowly, that once “idea” begins to grow into reality.

From my experiences, most people have great ideas but fail to see the execution through all the way. And the few that do see execution through quickly stop at the sight of any real obstacles (I’ve been guilty of both in the past).

If your lucky enough to find the right team with an entrepreneurial snowball effect, take your idea and just build something.