Innovation

The problem is that you put cells in the same vat and ask them to grow and they're producing ammonia, you're going to have a nice glass of urine! We must solve all of that!!

Six years ago, I got a phone call in Boston, an investor asked me what I thought about cultured meat? ..my answer was that it's probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard in my life.! And the question is, why? It's supposed to be obvious! When you take muscle cells, fat cells, or stem cells (that can become both muscle and fat), those cells don't grow very well outside of the body – they stop.

Our envy of birds certainly helped drive our will to fly, however I think Leonardo was probably held back by trying to emulate the flapping of birds; that doesn't work with human muscles. We had to free ourselves of the perception that you need to flap your wings.

Evolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene

You could take a sword from one game and move it to another. In the events industry, you can imagine having event tickets operating as these collectible, persistent, immutable objects you can carry between markets, with different benefits… potentially even being redeemable against real-world assets.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

Web3 and blockchain are as big of a fundamental shift as the internet was in 1999-2000. Crypto and NFTs create open systems with distributed ownership that can be used to build a practically infinite number of applications. We're at day zero of a gigantic wave.

Co-Founder and CEO of OpenSea, leading NFT marketplace platform

Right now, is the absolute best time in human history to be a disruptor. The world is awash with cash chasing disruptive ideas and most companies have one (if not both) hands tied behind their back.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

The only way to innovate is to follow Aristotle's prescription. To create a future that is different to the past is to imagine possibilities and choose the one for which the most compelling argument can be made, not the one for which there is the most data. If companies want to innovate, they need to realise that data analytics is killing innovation yet is lauded and used increasingly.

Management theorist & former Dean of Rotman School of Business

Look at someone like Leonardo da Vinci, he was interested in so many different areas, and connected the dots to create his amazing work. Look at Steve Jobs. He took calligraphy at university, and applied it to create the user interface for the Mac! The more we understand, the more we can ask questions.

Instead of saying 'I'm a technology entrepreneur…' you might say, 'well, I run a technology business, but I love philosophy and playing the piano…' the person you're speaking to now has a few more dots to connect! It takes active engagement in conversation to do this – you can't be passive and on autopilot.

Innovation is a skill, a teachable skill, just like management. If you focus on a handful of key principles, you can effectively drive innovation in any type of business. Innovative companies are not afraid of failure – they're willing to take risks, fail forward, learn from missteps, pivot, and keep going.

Former President of Nintendo of America, led iconic console era

Looking back, there were two things that made change possible for me. Firstly, I lived the change. My company was a way of, as they say, 'scratching my own itch.' I wanted to be able to go on working myself, and I realised that a lot of other women would have had comparable aims and desires.

Pioneering Software Engineer & Founder of Freelance Programmers Ltd

Life is moving so fast now. It used to be 50–100-year cycles between great inventions. Now every year we have game-changing inventions and innovations. You might think you're working on something utterly game changing, but there's a chance that a couple of months from now, you will be totally superseded.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO

I've never gone into a startup thinking, 'oh hey, I'm going to disrupt an industry….' I go in trying to solve a problem, and if you can effectively solve a problem, you might end up disrupting a whole industry.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO

I define disruption as being where the incumbent players and incumbents somehow deny what their customers are saying or want differently. A disruptor comes in, sees a problem more clearly, and in some cases has more freedom to attack the problem.

Co-Founder of Netflix & Former Redbox CEO

In 2010, Alibaba started talking about itself as an ecosystem and it invited many of the world's top biologists to come and lecture on how plants, water and animals all interact – and how that could teach a business about how to interact with its' own marketplace.

Jack Ma went to Jonathan and said, Jonathan, what do you know about finance? He said, 'I don't know anything about finance.' Jack said, 'Well, what do you know about PayPal?' – his response, 'I don't know anything about PayPal'. Jack then said, 'Okay, you're hired, we want you to be the CEO of Ali Pay!'.