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Over the years, I have learned that every significant invention has several characteristics. By definition it must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.

Edwin Land

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Edwin Land
Age: 81 †
Born: 1909
Born: May 7
Died: 1991
Died: March 1
Entrepreneur
Inventor
Photographer
Physicist
Bridgeport
Connecticut
Edwin Land
Edwin Herbert Land
E.H. Land
Must
Unexpected
Much
Definitions
Every
Several
Years
Invention
Would
Significant
World
Prepared
Startling
Learned
Characteristics
Come
Definition

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A mistake is an event, the full benefit of which has not yet been turned to your advantage.
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It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.
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The first thing you do is teach the person to feel that the vision is very important and nearly impossible. That draws out the drive in the winner.
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Marketing is what you do when your product is no good.
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The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
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It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious.
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Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds.
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You cannot separate the composition from the life of the moment. It is all one thing, to be decided in a split second while you're living through it.
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A premature attempt to explain something that thrills you will destroy your perceptivity rather than increase it, because your tendency will be to explain away rather than seek out.
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I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.
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I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
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Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.
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There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.
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