Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. Theodore Levitt More Quotes by Theodore Levitt More Quotes From Theodore Levitt Customers buy 1/4 holes, not 1/4 bits. Theodore Levitt bitsholescustomers You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging Theodore Levitt diggingwantwater The trouble with much of the advice business is getting today about the need to be more vigorously creative is, essentially, that its advocates have generally failed to distinguish between the relatively easy process of being creative in the abstract and the infinitely more difficult process of being innovationist in the concrete. Theodore Levitt creativebusinessadvice Anything in excess is a poison. Theodore Levitt excesspoison One should not focus on the differences between people but look for commonality and similarity. Theodore Levitt differencesfocuspeople Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection. Theodore Levitt imaginationscienceideas Though progress starts with the imagination, only work can make things happen. And work itself works best when fueled, again by the imagination. Theodore Levitt make-things-happenprogressimagination Ideas can be willed, and the imagination is their engine. Theodore Levitt imaginationscienceideas Ideas are useless unless used. Theodore Levitt innovationcreativityideas The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task. ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert. ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil. Theodore Levitt technologysciencemoving Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others. Theodore Levitt creativeresponsibilitypeople In spite of the extraordinary outpouring of totally and partially new products and new ways of doing things that we are witnessing today, by far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is imitation. Theodore Levitt innovationtodayway Ideation is not a synonym for innovation, conformity is not its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of "creative thinking.". Theodore Levitt creativesimplethinking
