Innovation, like evolution, is a process of constantly discovering ways of rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance–and that happen to be useful…it means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. It means much more than invention, because the word implies developing an invention to the point where it catches on because it is sufficiently practical, affordable, reliable and ubiquitous to be worth using.
Humanity’s problem today is that we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Every job comes with pieces you don’t like…. You have to figure out how to set up your life in such a way that you can minimize the things you don’t like. I’ve found that people don’t dislike hard work. What people dislike is being out of control—they can’t control their life; they can’t control their environment. This happens to me when I get over-scheduled. I hate being over-scheduled. I want some time to be able to think and free myself. We all have the same amount of time in the world. Nobody has more time than anybody else. And when you become a very successful person, one of the things that happens is you start to get over-scheduled…. So you have to guard your time and try to stay a little bit flexible.
A great part of true learning, in fact, takes the form of negative knowledge, of increasing awareness of the range and depth of our unconquered ignorance, and it is one of the major virtues of scholarship that only by means of it, one’s own or someone else’s, can one know when it is safe to dispense with it. Learned ignorance, therefore, is often praiseworthy, although ignorant learning … never is.
Above all, the people running a new venture need to spend time outside: in the marketplace, with customers and with their own salesmen, looking and listening.
– Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
In most cases, your reasons have very little to do with why you believe what you believe. The reasons are a story that come to your mind when you need to explain yourself.
Playing the long game is following the road less travelled by turning down what feels good now in favor of what we think will set us up for feeling awesome later on. We need to put up with criticism from those who are playing the short game and will tell us we’re boring or wasting our time.
– Joseph Henrich
Superior investment performance is not our primary goal. But superior performance with less-than commensurate risk above average gains in good times are not proof of a manager’s skill. It takes superior performance in bad times to prove that those good-time gains were earned through skill, not simply the acceptance of above average risk.
I don’t believe in valuations. I follow a migrationary path for the companies I invest in. We must be able to visualize the future. Take Gillette for example. Twin blades constitute mere 10% of the Indian marke. Bangladesh has 33% penetration. If India catches up with Bangladesh, Gillette will be a Rs 15,000 crore company having a net profit of Rs 2200 crores. At 40 times discounting, that’s Rs 27,000 per share. That is the migration path that a valuation cannot show In 1979, Hindustan Lever was a Rs 140 crore company. In 2013, its sales were Rs 27,000 crore. Again, only a migrationary thought process would have shown that and not valuation.