Trip Hawkins Quotes

Powerful Trip Hawkins for Daily Growth

About Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins, born on March 6, 1953, is an American video game industry pioneer, entrepreneur, and designer, renowned for his significant contributions to the gaming world. Growing up in Silicon Valley during the height of the Space Race, Hawkins was influenced by the spirit of innovation and creativity that permeated the region. After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in economics, Hawkins began his career at Apple Computer, where he worked alongside Steve Jobs. However, his passion for gaming led him to found Electronic Arts (EA) in 1982, revolutionizing the video game industry by focusing on high-quality, original games instead of licensed properties. Under Hawkins' leadership, EA developed and published several groundbreaking titles, including 'Mystery House,' one of the first graphical adventure games, 'The Oregon Trail,' an educational classic, and 'Sid Meier's Civilization,' a strategy game that remains influential today. In 1984, he introduced the concept of a "hit-driven" video game business model, which prioritized market research and risk management to ensure commercial success. Leaving EA in 1991, Hawkins went on to found 3DO Company, developing the first interactive multimedia platform for home entertainment. Although it faced stiff competition from Nintendo and Sega, the 3DO system helped usher in a new era of CD-ROM-based gaming. Trip Hawkins' work continues to influence the video game industry, with his emphasis on originality, quality, and innovation serving as a blueprint for future game developers and publishers. His visionary leadership has solidified his place among the pioneers of the gaming world.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"Innovation is taking two things that nobody else has ever put together before."

This quote emphasizes the importance of novelty in innovation, suggesting that true innovation arises when unique combinations of existing ideas, technologies, or approaches are brought together for the first time. It's a call to think outside the box, to merge diverse concepts and create something distinctively new and valuable. The essence of this quote lies in its encouragement to challenge conventional wisdom, explore unconventional connections, and strive for originality to make meaningful progress.


"The future is not about technology; it's about human beings."

This quote emphasizes that the progression of time, or "the future," is not solely defined by technological advancements. Instead, it underscores the fundamental importance of human beings as the driving force behind the direction and significance of our future. In essence, technology serves as a tool created by humans to facilitate their evolution, improve their lives, and interact with one another – ultimately reflecting humanity's values, aspirations, and collective potential.


"If you want to create something new and important, you have to be willing to do something old and boring."

This quote emphasizes that innovation often requires dedication to tedious, repetitive tasks. In other words, to achieve something groundbreaking and significant, one must be prepared to put in the hard work, which may involve doing the mundane aspects of the task over and over again. It underscores the idea that success doesn't always come from glamorous or exciting work but rather from perseverance and commitment to the process.


"Creativity is the most powerful source of competitive advantage."

Trip Hawkins' quote emphasizes that creativity, rather than financial resources or technological prowess, is a potent driver for maintaining a competitive edge in business. Creativity fosters unique ideas, products, and services that differentiate companies from their competitors, making them more attractive to customers and harder for rivals to replicate. By nurturing creative thinking and innovation within an organization, businesses can create lasting value and stay ahead of the competition.


"When people ask me what my biggest failure was, I tell them it was not taking enough risk."

This quote highlights the importance of taking risks in life and business, emphasizing that failure can sometimes be a necessary step towards greater success. Trip Hawkins suggests that not taking enough risks could potentially lead to missed opportunities for growth and achievement. By being open to taking calculated risks, individuals may find themselves pushed out of their comfort zones, fostering personal and professional development.


Online console gaming will continue to grow at a healthy pace.

- Trip Hawkins

Grow, Gaming, Will, Console

As a result, we will continue to see more innovation on the Internet and on mobile phones than on consoles.

- Trip Hawkins

Innovation, Result, See, Consoles

We also had good software in the key categories and more focus on the gameplaying capability, so more of the marketing effort was targeted at game customers.

- Trip Hawkins

Game, Software, More, Categories

But any big change is more likely to result if there is a disruptive event such as new technologies or platforms that have a surprising effect on market share.

- Trip Hawkins

New, Big, Likely, Platforms

With our next generation hardware, polygon rendering will probably be an area we'll get more heavily into.

- Trip Hawkins

Generation, Next, Area, Rendering

There's a basic principle about consumer electronics: it gets more powerful all the time and it gets cheaper all the time. that's true of all types of consumer electronics.

- Trip Hawkins

Cheaper, Principle, Types, Consumer

The way companies hang on to their marketshare is by being scared.

- Trip Hawkins

Hang, Being, Companies, Scared

Console game publishing has become more like theatrical release film-making and it is very hard if you are not one of the major publishers, and even for them it is hard unless they are working with major game brands.

- Trip Hawkins

Game, Console, Very, Film-Making

The only problem we've had is the amount of time it's taking people to develop titles.

- Trip Hawkins

Problem, Only, Amount, Titles

What that means initially is that you have alot of products that are only slightly better games in the same genre on another machine - and the titles that really take advantage of the machine come along later.

- Trip Hawkins

Means, Slightly, Advantage, Titles

Digital Chocolate has 60% of its developers in Finland where the sun never sets in the summer and there is nothing to do outside in the winter, so we are very productive!

- Trip Hawkins

Digital, Very, Sets, Productive

From day one our next generation system will run all our exsisting software - so that gives us a head start.

- Trip Hawkins

Software, Generation, Next, Gives

We'll look at the japanese launch as a model and aspire to have things go as well as they did over there.

- Trip Hawkins

Over, Japanese, Things, Aspire

And initially, a lot of companies avoid trying to make a really radical new kind of title for a new system, because that would involve learning a new machine and learning how to make the new title at the same time.

- Trip Hawkins

New, Kind, Radical, Initially

So the guy that we're really targeting our system at this year is one of the guys who brought a 16bit system three or four years ago and has pretty much had it with that, and he's ready to buy something new.

- Trip Hawkins

Year, Buy, Brought, Targeting

We want to make as big a market as we can with our current product.

- Trip Hawkins

Product, Big, Market, Current

None of our competitors have ever made two systems that run the same software.

- Trip Hawkins

Software, Same, Ever, Competitors

I'm not saying that more performance wouldn't be better - all these technologies are going to get better - that's the difference between first generation and second generation.

- Trip Hawkins

Generation, More, Going, Technologies

I can't tell you how important it was for us to be successful in japan.

- Trip Hawkins

Important, Tell, How, Japan

But we also think that we've got more quite alot more support than any new format has ever had.

- Trip Hawkins

Think, New, More, Format

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