"man’s near- God- like quality of being able to create new things"

 

"Schumpeterian elements are deeply embedded in the German economics tradition. A focus on learning and progress, very clear in Leibniz and Wolff, is based on the Gottesähnlichkeit of man: man’s near- God- like quality of being able to create new things. Being born in the image of God meant that it was man’s pleasurable duty to invent. At its most fundamental level, the contrast between English and German economics lies in the view of the human mind. To John Locke, man’s mind is a blank slate — a tabula rasa — with which he is born, and which passively receives impressions throughout life. To Leibniz, man has an active mind that constantly compares experiences with established schemata, a mind both noble and creative.

Of Adam Smith’s ideas, the one most repudiated by German economists was that man is essentially an animal that has learned to barter. In the tradition that followed Smith, ideas and inventions have been produced outside the economic system. Karl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, dedicated a whole chapter in his Grundrisse to refute Smith’s view on this point. In the German tradition, including Marx and Schumpeter, the view is that man is an animal who has learned to invent. Nietzsche later added the point that man is the only animal that can keep promises, and therefore creates laws and institutions. Putting these elements together, we have an impressionistic picture of what differentiates English from German economics — barter and ‘metaphysical speculation’, on the one hand, and production and institutions, on the other."

Trecho retirado de  "The Visionary Realism of German Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to the Cold War".

"we have no real way of knowing what's viable until we actually give it a shot"

""It's not what you don't know that kills you," Mark Twain famously said, "it's what you know for sure that ain't true" and that's the real innovator's dilemma. Innovation, necessarily, is about the future, but all we can really know is about the past and some of the present. Innovation is always a balancing act of staying true to your vision and re-examining your assumptions.
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Innovation is always about the future and the future, especially with regard to technology, is often uncertain.
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Lean startup guru Steve Blank likes to say that "no business plan survives first contact with a customer." It's one of those quotes that's constantly repeated because it's so obviously true to anyone who has ever launched a product. We can analyze surveys till we're blue in the face, but we really don't know what will happen until we see something hit the market.
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If you went to an investor and said you wanted to start a business but did not have any idea about the technology, the customer or the competitive environment, you probably wouldn't get very far. Nevertheless, that's exactly how every business starts. You have some assumptions, many of which will be proven wrong and you will have to adapt. [Moi ici: Por causa disto é que considero de uma imprudência alarmante isto e isto]
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Unfortunately, an idea can never be validated backwards, only forwards, so we have no real way of knowing what's viable until we actually give it a shot. That's why the ones that succeed learn how to test new ideas, see what happens and learn until they find something that really works. Innovation is never about what you know, but what you don't."

Trechos retirados de "Innovation Isn't About What You Know, But What You Don't"