“I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that the...” — Henry Petroski Quote

I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.

An over-reliance on past successes is a sure blueprint for future failures.

Failures are much more dramatic than successes, and people like drama. I think this is why automobile races draw such crowds. People expect spectacular crashes, which we tend to find more interesting than cars just racing around the track. The same is true of bridges, buildings, or any structure or machine.

Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what went wrong in the case study.

A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.

It's really important for me that we work with the best factories and factories that are really thoughtful in their design and make sure that we can also produce the best product and do best by those who are helping produce our product around the world.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.

There are two main methodologies of open source development. There's the Apache model, which is design by committee - great for things like web servers. Then you have the benevolent dictator model. That's what Ubuntu is doing, with Mark Shuttleworth.