Every creative industry is engaged in a civil war. The creatives — whether writers, painters or musicians — want to play with new forms of expression; the capitalists prefer to go with what worked last time. But sometimes the two sides come together, on equal terms, in gloriously fertile equilibrium.
We call these periods golden ages.
Ian Leslie, writing in the Financial Times, on “the golden age of television“
What I love about architecture and industrial design is the inherent constraint of usability that exists in those fields. You can make a pretty house but it has to be livable. You can make a beautiful fork but someone still needs to be able to eat with it.
Tara Mann, a product designer who has worked for Basecamp, Twitter, and Science, Inc. quoted in: Tara Mann walks the line between weird and sensible.
People care about security, but they also have a lot on their mind. They don’t want to think about security.
Syl Chao, CEO of Turing Robotic Industries, in Wired Magazine. (Your phone is your most vulnerable gadget.)
In my 24 years as CEO, I have learned one big thing.
All competitive advantages – price, quality, even technology – are commoditized over a long-enough time horizon.
The only way to have a sustainable competitive advantage is people.
Phil Shawe, co-CEO of TransPerfect, at GlobalLink Next 2016 in San Francisco. (Came across it while thinking through a piece on the translation industry, private equity, and Labor Day over at my political blog.)