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Everybody believes in innovation until they see it. Then they think, 'Oh, no; that'll never work. It's too different.'
Nolan Bushnell
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Interpretation

What this quote means

People are initially excited about new ideas until they confront their practical implications, leading to skepticism.

This quote by Nolan Bushnell emphasizes the common human tendency to embrace innovation in theory but to resist it in practice. Innovations often challenge the status quo and provoke fear and doubt when faced with their implementation, revealing a paradox where initial enthusiasm can quickly turn into hesitation due to the fear of change and the unknown.

Themes

InnovationChangeSkepticismProgressFearIdeas

In practice

Example use cases

In a business meeting discussing new technology implementations.

More from Nolan Bushnell

Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.
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Creativity is every company's first driver. It's where everything starts, where energy and forward motion originate. Without that first charge of creativity, nothing else can take place.
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A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.
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Everybody copied Atari products. So we started messing with them and it was fun. We bought enough chips that we could get them mislabeled. So we bankrupted at least two companies which copied our boards, and bought all the parts but they were the wrong parts, so they're sitting on all this inventory they can't sell because the games don't work.
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The game business reinvents itself every five years.
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Do I really want to do a mobile game that's one of 300,000, where discoverability is everything? You really have to have a little more sizzle on the steak. I would rather be one of 100 apps for Google Glass than one of 300,000 for iOS and Android.
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