• Columnists

Chris Carbone, Futurist

Chris Carbone has worked in trend and foresight consulting for over a decade, serving clients from Fortune 500 corporation and foreign and US government agencies. During this time he has researched and authored dozens of reports and scenarios on wide-ranging topics…from the future of leisure and play, to the future of urban mobility, to emerging consumer lifestyles in China.

Chris has been quoted in numerous publications including The Miami Herald, The Washington Post Express, and Fast Company, and appeared on the CBS Early Show. He currently oversees Innovaro’s two multi-client research projects—Global Lifestyles and Technology Foresight—and contributes to the firm’s custom engagements.

Chris has an MBA from Johns Hopkins University with a concentration in marketing, and received his undergraduate degree in history from Gettysburg College. For more information, contact him at chris.carbone@innovaro.com.

About Innovaro—Insights & Research

Innovaro Insight & Research helps organizations understand and shape the future of their business. Through its syndicated and custom research services it provides actionable business insights to help clients uncover emerging consumer needs and behaviors, anticipate and seize growth opportunities, define critical emerging issues shaping the future of their industry, mitigate risk, and enrich decision-making. For more information visit /www.innovaro.com.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.”

– Cecil B. DeMille

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.”

– Anthony Trollope

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which obstacles vanish.”

– John Quincy Adams

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

– Robert Frost

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

– Steve Jobs

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.”

– Steve Jobs, Apple, Inc.

Do you have the desire to create something new; the strength of conviction to believe your creation will be successful, and the reservoir of energy necessary to thrust it into the marketplace?”

– Steven Schussler

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

– William Butler Yeats

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”

– Madam C.J. Walker

Speaking more than one language is no longer just an asset in today’s job market; it is a requirement.”

– Tom Adams, CEO, Rosetta Stone

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

You don’t go into a field that requires cracking people’s heads open or operating on something as delicate as the spinal cord unless you are comfortable with taking risks.”

– Dr. Ben Carson

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.“


– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

He who knows he has enough is rich.”

– Tao Te Ching

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
 A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

– Erica Jong

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff