Don Winfield

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“But the order in which these sources will be discussed is not arbitrary. They are listed in descending order of reliability and predictability. For, contrary to almost universal belief, new knowledge – and especially new scientific knowledge – is not the most reliable or most predictable source of successful innovations. For all the visibility, glamour, and importance of science-based innovation, it is actually the least reliable and least predictable one. Conversely, the mundane and unglamorous analysis of such symptoms of underlying changes as the unexpected success or the unexpected failure carry fairly low risk and uncertainty. And the innovations arising therefrom have, typically, the shortest lead time between the start of a venture and its measurable results, whether success or failure.”
― Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

“The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood