The Age of Ideas Quotes

“Art is the expression of human creativity and imagination, which produces works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty. It’s emotional.

Commerce is the activity of buying and selling, particularly on a grand scale. It’s black and white: either a purchase is made or it isn’t. It’s practical.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Experienced creatives develop the ability to manifest their breed of creativity consistently over a period of time. Simply put, it’s the difference between a one-hit wonder and Michael Jackson.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“In today’s market, anything that isn’t differentiated through creativity or a 10x technology will be immediately commodified by the industrial system. The only way to sustainably incite your audience to take action is to inspire them with meaningful purpose.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The meaning behind your passion, whether it be for hospitality, law, or hot sauce, now translates into value. In the Age of Ideas this is what the market demands, and you have the power to give it to them by unlocking your unique creative potential.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Employees are people. Customers are people. Same for entrepreneurs, business leaders. Conclusion? Companies are created by people and run by people, to service the needs and wants of people. Despite this fairly obvious observation, we tend to manage business and personal matters differently.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Creativity is that special something. It can take you from good to great, from want to need, from admiration to infatuation. It is intangible, emotional, and premium-worthy. It’s honest. It’s simple. It’s generous. It’s beautiful to watch and effortless to enjoy. Once you get in touch with your creativity, nothing else is ever the same. It is an energy deep within, one that connects us all.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The way to create value in the Age of Ideas is to identify, manifest, and share your creativity.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Creativity, like love, is entirely emotional, meaning it doesn’t have a physical presence. That’s what makes it so extraordinary, and yet so difficult for so many to believe in or understand. It makes a lot of very smart people uncomfortable; they have an intense desire for creativity in their lives or businesses, but they can’t just purchase it like a material thing or control it like a process in a factory.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“To manifest your creativity you must believe deeply in the emotional elements and patiently invest in them. Once you find your creativity, it must be encouraged and enhanced, not controlled. The best of the best—the Apples, Nikes, Michael Jordans, Andy Warhols, Meryl Streeps of the world—have it; they protect it, believe in it, and as long as they stay true to their essence they’ll continue to reap the benefits that come with creative thinking and living.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The secret to a fulfilling life is to discover what excites you, what you love to do, and then spend your days passionately pursuing, sharing, and manifesting that purpose with all your heart. And purpose is exactly that—it’s “the reason for which something exists.” It’s the why behind everything you do.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Bottled water is another example. Free, high-quality water is available in much of the developed world. But the developed world is exactly where the majority of bottled water is consumed. In 2012, in the U.S. alone, we spent $11.8 billion dollars on bottled water. Because packaging is a fixed price and water is a low-priced com- modity, what exactly are we paying the rest of the money for? The answer is that much of the value is tied up in the brand, the idea, how it makes you feel, the creativity.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Despite our efforts to be practical and logical, humans remain emotional beings, and we all crave meaningful emotional interaction with other humans. We don’t just want meatballs, we want Grandma’s meatballs; we don’t just want a smartphone, we want to Think Different; we don’t just want to go to any old amusement park, we want to go to the Magic Kingdom; and we don’t want water, we want artesian water from Fiji. The story, the experience—that’s what is critical to creating, and the emotional connection established through that art is what drives commerce in the contemporary market.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“...creators must deeply believe in what they’re manifesting in order for others to believe. Today’s term of choice for this conviction is authenticity. Walk into any boardroom nowadays and you’ll hear executives asking how they can make their products or services more authentic. The chal- lenge is that there’s no way to be authentic without actually doing something that’s genuine. You must believe in what you’re creating and sharing with the world. Authenticity is exactly that—the point at which you manifest your deep beliefs into something tangible. Therefore, in the modern market there’s more value than ever placed on the level of belief that creators have in their creation.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Generally, when someone is unhappy or lacking meaningful sustenance in their life or business, it’s because their internal self isn’t in harmony with their external self.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“When artists start out, no one knows who they are or what they do. Despite this, they start manifesting their vision. A painter begins painting and sharing those paintings with the market. Maybe she sells a cou- ple at a low price, or maybe she can’t sell any. So what does she do? Somehow she begins to share the story behind her art. Why does she paint? Where did she come from? What’s her inspiration? What’s the meaning behind her work? Why does she need—not want, need—to paint? And over time people hear her story: some connect with it and others don’t, but the ones who do connect, who see a reflection of themselves in her story, become her tribe. Maybe eventually she gets a gallerist, manager, patron, or publicist, and they share her resonant story with even more people, growing her tribe. Then what happens? Though the paintings are the same, by combining the work with an authentic, resonant story, our painter magically creates value and demand for her art grows.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“In simplest terms, you won’t be able to unlock your creative potential, achieve sustainable success, or even be fundamentally happy unless you align your internal and external worlds—unless you’re true to yourself. Therefore, to begin the journey of discovering your purpose, you must focus on what matters to you internally, not externally. And the first step in this process is to eliminate obstacles that prevent you from hearing the signal above the noise. These obstacles include things such as commercial concerns, financial motivations, comparing yourself to someone else, and other manifestations of ego.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Quite often, the discussion of purpose in an organizational setting is diluted by groupthink, as most people don’t feel comfortable giving their honest opinion, especially when doing so could impact their employment or financial status. Therefore, organizations must work to find ways to create safe environments for honest sharing and empower key stakeholders to make decisions that aren’t always popular—because to do something truly special, you must be as honest, defined, and differentiated as possible.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“When Disney’s children were very young, he’d tried to take
them to places where their imaginations could run wild. But every
carnival or fair seemed to be dirty, poorly run, and filled with vice.
Walt wanted to create a place where people could take their family
and forget the concerns of the everyday world—a place beautiful,
safe, and filled with endless wonder. So at about the same time
that he had started selling assets and conserving his capital, he
pulled aside one of his art directors and had him begin working on
concept sketches for a new kind of amusement park. The sketches
started to illustrate the vision he had in his head, a utopian world
where guests would enter a fairytale world.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“It was a memorable night for a burgeoning community of food enthusiasts at exactly the right moment. I was ecstatic. For the first time in my adult life, I was doing something purely for the joy of sharing my passion with the world, rather than to stroke my ego or make money. It felt like I was finally living my purpose. I was manifesting my dreams, making tangible an inspiration that came from deep within.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“When I refer to experienced creativity as a critical part of manifesting your ideas, I’m pointing to the need for creativity that has been steadily practiced through years of experi- mentation; whether or not you’re a prodigy, that’s what it takes to reach your potential.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The more I research the emotional elements, the more I realize the divided approach—life on one side, business on the other—is not only ridiculous but harmful to the bottom line. Most individuals run their lives focused solely on meeting their financial needs, and most organizations make decisions based solely on their P&Ls. Traditionally, little or no value is placed on understanding the emotional elements. But in the modern market, it’s creativity—a purely emotional element—that has the ability to change the value of a business simply by altering its perception or usage.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Through this purpose Sweetgreen has become more than a restaurant—it’s become a movement and a community, one that people are so proud to be a part of that they share Sweetgreen content on their social feeds and wear T-shirts emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo. The founders remain committed to their differentiating core values, such as “creating solutions where the company wins, the customer wins, and the community wins,” and have used those values, rooted in their purpose, to drive the company forward.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Once we’ve met our basic needs—safety, security, sustenance, and shelter—those same emotional elements, not material wealth, determine our level of fulfillment, or, as some may refer to it, our personal success. These parallel truths—that amazing achievement and lasting fulfillment for both individuals and organizations come from understanding and harnessing those emotional elements—are critical to flourishing in our new age, the Age of Ideas.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“For example, the creation or ongoing success of a product is entirely dependent on its ability to influence people’s actions, pri- marily by getting them to make a purchase or use a product. Just think of the Internet, which is designed to get you to take a specific action, such as consuming content, making a purchase, or filling out a lead form. Not a single webpage exists without this inten- tion. And the influencing of people’s actions is based on impacting them emotionally. We’re all emotional beings. To manage, sell to, parent, support, or lead people, we must understand and value the emotional as much as if not more than the practical. Only when you accept and embrace this fact will you be able to fully unlock your potential.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“While Sweetgreen specializes in serving healthy salads and grain bowls, there are doz- ens of salad and health food restaurant groups that do the same. It is Sweetgreen’s commitment to their higher purpose that sets them apart.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“Up until that day, I had never really thought about why I defined success that way—instead, I’d been obsessed with how I would attain those things. That focus on the how instead of the why had really tripped me up. It had led me to make some very bad decisions and to experience some very unhappy times. When you follow the influence of mainstream culture—television, movies, magazines, and more—to elevate the goals of wealth, power, and recognition above all else, it becomes logical to take selfish or negative actions in order to attain them. After all, that kind of approach—playing the game, playing for keeps, as they say—is put forth as the way to achieve success and happiness. Machiavelli’s writings are often referenced to support this point of view—statements like “the ends justify the means”—but it should be noted that Machiavelli died alone and in exile.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“The greatest challenge individuals and organizations will face when attempting to manifest their creative potential is not a lack of talent or resources—it’s a lack of understanding.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“It’s only when you free yourself from external definitions of success that you’re able to comprehend the folly of this type of pursuit. Ask yourself: What’s the point of attaining a goal if it isn’t going to satisfy your internal needs? All you’re going to end up with is some form of a trophy (money, a big house, a nice watch, some press clippings) alongside a big bowl of unhappiness and dissatis- faction. You can only define yourself as a success if the result of your actions is the satisfaction of your internal desires, not that of some superficial, outside force.
It isn’t relevant if society deems you a success—it’s whether you believe you’re achieving success that matters. For some this may mean fame and fortune, but for others it may just mean putting food on the table every night for their family and having a loving relationship with their spouse. The determining factor is how you feel and what you desire on the inside. The first and most powerful step is realizing you have the power to determine what success looks like for you. Only then can you free yourself from the myth and begin the journey of living your truth.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“It was my own frustration in constantly explaining the value of intangibles that led me to write down these thoughts, intending to increase understanding by creating a coherent explanation of this transformative perspective.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“AMAZING ACHIEVEMENT AND LASTING FULFILLMENT COMES FROM UNDERSTANDING AND HARNESSING THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS.”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential