“Innovators spend a lot of their time being uncomfortable – and they’re pretty comfortable with that. When you’re leading innovation, it’s all about creating a safe space for people to share thoughts, to push the edge and to challenge things.”

PETER BUCA VP of Technology & Innovation / Fluid Connectors Group

Parker Hannifin

“We all play a role in helping spur innovation, in getting ideas from the laboratory to Wall Street. If we want hopes and dreams in the marketplace, let’s start by supporting those hopes and dreams for each and every individual.”

LLOYD TROTTER Founder & Managing Partner

GenNx360 Capital Partners

“Innovation is what keeps you in business. To stay in business, you have to reinvent yourself every single day.”

MARYROSE SYLVESTER President & CEO

GE Lighting

“Innovation is a creed in something. It has to be something unique. It could be almost anything. You can be innovative about your business practices. You can be innovative about technology. You can even be innovative about government.”

ANTHONY KNIGHT Associate Commissioner for Innovation Development

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

“Innovators fail. One of the jobs of a leader of innovation is to protect your failures. Pick those pieces up and find a way to turn those into value.”

PETER BUCA VP of Technology & Innovation / Fluid Connectors Group

Parker Hannifin

“If we don’t change, we run the risk of being Kodak. That’s what gets me out of bed. Not on my watch – it’s not going to happen.”

MARYROSE SYLVESTER President & CEO

GE Lighting

“Business leaders who are forward-thinking really understand the value of something that you can expand and build on and make it into a product that will give you first-mover advantage. That’s where innovation really connects.”

LLOYD TROTTER Founder & Managing Partner

GenNx360 Capital Partners

“If you don’t have the leaders in place to help you and to allow you to go forward with ideas, it just doesn’t work out.”

ANTHONY KNIGHT Associate Commissioner for Innovation Development

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

“Pull people together who have an opportunity to drive change. Tell them: Get nuts. Tell me what’s possible. Tell me what you need.”

MARYROSE SYLVESTER President & CEO

GE Lighting

“Our sports culture does us a disservice when you think about business and innovation. We have this mental model that there’s a game going on, and at the end of the game someone wins and someone loses. Innovation is a game that never ends. There really is no loser and no winner. It’s a matter of continually trying.”

PETER BUCA VP of Technology & Innovation / Fluid Connectors Group

Parker Hannifin

(l to r) Anthony Knight, Lloyd Trotter, CSU President Ronald M. Berkman, Peter Buca and Maryrose Sylvester

These quotes were taken from the forum “From Laboratory to Wall Street: How Hopes and Dreams Enter the Marketplace,” presented March 4, 2015, at Cleveland State University by the Monte Ahuja College of Business and the Washkewicz College of Engineering as part of

the 50th Anniversary CSU Presidential Forums series.

For a complete schedule of upcoming forums in the series and registration information, please visit www.csuohio.edu/50/forums.html

© 2015 Cleveland State University