David Kelley

This guy really is an inspiration, even if you are only reading a 3rd-party written article about him...

...we moved from thinking of ourselves as designers to thinking of ourselves as design thinkers...

...creative confidence that, when given a difficult problem, we have a methodology that enables us to come up with a solution that nobody has before.

on how thinking about his daughter helped him pull through his fight against cancer...

"At first, you think, 'I don't want to miss her growing up.' That's motivating, but not that motivating," ... ... When you think, I don't want her not to have a father -- then you want to stay alive."

"I really do believe I was put on the planet to help people have creative confidence,"

"I don't have 27 agendas. I'm not the sustainability guy, or the developing-world guy. My contribution is to teach as many people as I can to use both sides of their brain..."

"If the goal is to change the world, the business part changes the world faster."

"Our dent in the universe doesn't mean we have to do all the digging," ... "We empower our clients. We teach them to fish."

Ideo's largesse is in sync with Kelley's mission -- and with his confidence in his own company's ability to reinvent itself.

"I can give our methodology away," he says at a staff meeting on Ideo's future, "because I know we can come up with a better idea tomorrow."