If this wasn't a huge opportunity, I wouldn't waste my time- most of our investors wouldn't. If we were producing luxury meat that is only aimed at Michelin Star restaurants. The number of people that can afford to eating Michelin star restaurants is relatively few, you're not going to make an impact on the climate, you're not going make an impact on the future of our kids.
— Yaakov Nahmias“The endurance of games like backgammon or chess lies in their continual presentation of an interesting problem. These strategy and decision-making games are like a well from which we draw insights. As a game designer, I can attest that while creating games, most rule combinations aren't inherently fascinating. Often, a game concept might initially seem uninteresting or static, and despite efforts to invigorate it, it remains lifeless.”— Frank Lantz
Game designer and NYU professor known for game theory and interactive entertainment
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There's also a great metaphor from the world of automotive technology. The main naysayers against cars were probably the drivers of carriages in the streets of New York. At some point, the Model T factory was open. And suddenly you're looking around, you're looking at the friend that is driving a car and you're saying, wait a second – he doesn't need a barn to house your horse.
— Yaakov NahmiasThe 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!!
— Yaakov NahmiasWe got to the point where, we are not on our grandparents' planet anymore. Meat has become less healthy for us – it's too available. There are too many calories, too much saturated fat. Animals are no longer 'free-rangy', they are growing in very tight confined conditions.
— Yaakov NahmiasSix 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.
— Yaakov NahmiasMy learnings came not only from our successes, but a lot of the key learnings came from failures. When you do experience failure rather than to run away from it, you have to sit down and do a good post-mortem and learn from your failures.
— Daniel LamarrePresident and CEO of Cirque du Soleil
If you have a great show, you have a great business. If you don't have a good show, you have no business. What it means is that show has to come first. Don't start the day by saying 'how many tickets am I going to sell today?'
— Daniel LamarrePresident and CEO of Cirque du Soleil
When we open a new show, it started with about 20 creators at the table, and I will say to the rest of the company, 'leave them alone. I don't want them to be bugged by HR or finance or administrative stuff. I want them to breathe and eat and sleep only about the artistic content of the next show'.
— Daniel LamarrePresident and CEO of Cirque du Soleil
Being creative is about being a collective. It's not something unique. Cirque is not a one man, or a one woman show. It's a collective. That's why we can nurture each other's creativity.
— Daniel LamarrePresident and CEO of Cirque du Soleil
There is no business without creativity. And I think we have a lot of examples of great organisations that didn't want to be creative. Kodak is a good example, they didn't want to see the digital world! Creativity for me is the first condition to establish yourself as a leader in whatever you do in life.
— Daniel LamarrePresident and CEO of Cirque du Soleil
People don't know what it is that they're negotiating over… If you don't, then it's hard to know if you've gotten a bad deal, a fair deal, or a great deal! That's going to lead us to the negotiation pie, and with the negotiation pie comes the extra value that negotiators create by coming together.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
Sometimes it doesn't matter if the other side doesn't care about fairness; provided you do, you explain what's going on. I'm now playing his game and I pick something that's arbitrary. And now it's arbitrary vs. arbitrary versus principle versus arbitrary.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
The first thing I'd say is a big mistake is not caring about what the other side wants. Oftentimes people are thinking I have to say no to the other side. My goal is to say yes to them. It's to figure out what it is they want and give it to them.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
What I like the most and essentially is never done is to start off a negotiation by talking about how you'll negotiate, what's the process going to be? And to say things like 'my goal in this negotiation is to reach an agreement with you in which we create a giant pie and split it evenly and can we agree that that's our goal?'
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
I think people all the time, hide or lie about information that would be useful to share. If you think about somebody who's selling their business because they want to climb the seven summits and they think, Oh… that's sort of embarrassing, it's selfish ….and so they say, I'm doing it because I'm retiring. We hide things that are ultimately good reasons.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
You have to keep your business in what Jeff Bezos calls day one state. You have to keep your business on its toes, you have to be high energy, and push your people and business to do better. Never let them fall into complacency, into a day two business state. They'd rather always keep them young, energetic, on their toes and hungry.
— Pepyn Dinandt