I don't think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you're willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn't work. If you're going to invent, it means you're going to experiment, and if you're going to experiment, you're going to fail, and if you're going to fail, you have to think long term.
I'm a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they're simpler for customers.
Our motto at Blue Origin is 'Gradatim Ferociter': 'Step by Step, Ferociously.'
I don't know all the future steps, but I know one of them: we need to build a low-cost, highly operable, reusable launch vehicle. No matter which path we take, it has to include that gate, and so that's why that's Blue Origin's mission.
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.
I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
The Moon Village concept has a nice property in that it basically just says, 'Look, everybody builds their own lunar outpost, but let's do it close to each other.' That way... you can go over to the European Union lunar outpost and say, 'I'm out of eggs. What have you got?'
I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.
In just a few hundred years, we will have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells if we want to continue to grow our energy usage.
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Once you get into space, you can really unleash a lot of creativity, but the launch itself? I have been through all of the creative ways, and believe me, chemical rockets are the best.
The reason we chose vertical landing as our recovery architecture is that vertical landing scales really well.
A life of stasis would be population control, combined with energy rationing. That is the stasis world that you live in if you stay. And even with improvements in efficiency, you'll still have to ration energy. That, to me, doesn't sound like a very exciting civilization for our grandchildren's grandchildren to live in.