Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Edwin LandRead
I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
Interpretation
The future of small companies will focus equally on research and manufacturing.
Edwin Land's quote reflects the evolving landscape of business, suggesting that small companies in the future will prioritize innovation and research just as much as they emphasize production and manufacturing. This paradigm shift highlights the importance of creativity and development in staying competitive in a rapidly changing market.
In practice
In a pitch meeting, you might use this quote to emphasize the importance of research in your business model.
Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Industry is best at the intersection of science and art.
It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years.
My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Work only on problems that are manifestly important and seem to be nearly impossible to solve. That way you will have a natural market for your product and no competition.
Intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out resources in people that they didn't know they had.
I have always been convinced that the only way to get artificial intelligence to work is to do the computation in a way similar to the human brain. That is the goal I have been pursuing. We are making progress, though we still have lots to learn about how the brain actually works.
I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.
The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is the sort we intend.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
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