Patrick O. Brown quotes: the Impossible Foods founder on how to make the impossible possible.
“You are the solution. Take the initiative, carry your ideas forward, and keep moving. There’s a huge need for lots of people to take their ideas, really take them forward; some of them will fail, some of them will succeed. The minute you decide to do something and take action, you are way ahead of the pack. Initiative is what matters.”
“I’m not a guy who places limits on himself, and that’s my message. There’s a big phenomenon of people self-censoring, worrying about the imposter syndrome. They say, ‘Someone has to do this, but I’m not the guy,’ or, ‘I’m not qualified.’ People limit their own opportunities.”
“There’s endless opportunities.”
“Be brash enough to assume that you will realize your goals, and expend your energy not on pessimism, but experimentation. Motivation ramps up dramatically once you find yourself taking action. A small step today becomes a giant leap tomorrow.”
“You don’t need to be an expert. I’m no expert on food, I wasn’t an expert on climate. I just decided this was something I wanted to do, and taught myself. A big thing that holds back initiative from highly-engaged and motivated young people is that they think, ‘Oh well, I’m not an expert, so how can I do that?’ Well, just decide to do it.”
“People aren’t born to become leaders, they decide to make themselves responsible.”
“Think smart and be subversive. Subversion is an underemployed strategy. [The food problem] is not going to be solved by telling people what to do, it’s not going to be solved by shaming them or educating them about what a terrible problem this is. You have to find a subversive way of doing it.”
“You won’t achieve anything by shouting at people. Respect the people you’re trying to influence, work hard to understand what they care about, then consider how you might invite them to a new way of doing things.”
“If you can, do a better job of satisfying what consumers want. Every case in history where better technology has come along like that, it sweeps away the old technology.”
“The goal here is to replace the incumbent technology by competing in the marketplace. And in order to do that, you need to be available to as many consumers as possible, so they have the opportunity to choose your product.”
“If you just look at history, it’s an endless succession of better ideas and better technology displacing older technologies. And I think that that’s a tremendously powerful way to solve global problems, is to understand not just what, from an environmental standpoint, needs to be done, but to understand how to do it in a way that over-delivers for consumers. Because you can have something that, from an environmental standpoint, is much less destructive or much more positive, but it’s not going to scale. It’s not going to have an impact, unless there’s a market for it.”
“The hard part is taking your good intentions in terms of addressing environmental problems, and figuring out how to solve them in a way that creates value for the consumers of the products that you’re trying to displace. And that’s something that, I think that principle can be applied again and again and again. And it is being applied. That’s going to be what drives their success. Not good intentions by consumers, but creating a product that’s not only more sustainable, but does a better job of delivering what they care about.”
“What’s 125% today is 100% a month from now, going 80% two months from now, so you really have to be thinking much more about really getting ahead of the game.”
“I’m an entrepreneur who’s founded several companies and organizations. I’m also a teacher at heart and I believe in freely sharing the knowledge that I and others have gained with everyone in the world.”
“When I was nearly 60, I left a dream job to pursue an ambitious mission: to create delicious meat from plants.”
“I couldn’t have imagined myself doing this. But the most powerful, subversive tool on earth is the free market. If you can take a problem and figure out a solution that involves making consumers happier, you’re unstoppable.”
“As a biochemist, I’d become alarmed at the destructive impact of meat production on the environment, so I set out to make a burger so juicy and flavorful that even meat-lovers would crave it. After some painstaking research, my team created the Impossible Burger, and famous chefs started to feature it in their restaurants.”
“There’s no road map for what we’re doing. But someone has to solve this problem. I figure it might as well be me.”
“I’m passionate about my work.”
“I feel like hopefully everyone feels some sort of obligation to take care of their community, to take care of other people in the world, take into account the welfare of future generations, and weigh that in what they do and the choices they make, and so forth.”
“I don’t think that I’m in any position to judge. A lot of these choices are very complicated, and I feel like it’s not useful to make a judgment about the choices someone else makes. From their perspective, they have very good reasons to make the choices they’re making today, and there’s just nothing positive about taking that perspective. Instead it’s, ‘What can I do to solve the problem? What can I do?'”
“The fact is that there is a significant trend among consumers, particularly younger consumers, to be much more conscious of the environmental impact of the choices that they make, in their life and in their diet and so forth. And that’s incredibly valuable. And I do feel like any effort that we can make to inform them, so that their good intentions are translated into meaningful actions or better choices and so forth, I think that’s great. And I feel very optimistic that if you just look at the level of awareness, and the way that translates into choices among people who are younger—particularly college-age and younger—there’s a vastly increased awareness of global environmental issues, and motivation to make good choices in terms of their environmental impact.”
“Consumers understanding really the full suite of impacts of those choices, not only on their pleasure of life, but also on the world that their kids and grandkids are going to live in and so forth, that’s absolutely critical. And it’s wonderful, and I think it’s great that young people are much more conscious about these things and making better choices, but we can’t depend on that to solve the problem. And it’s great that consumers are getting better educated, and younger consumers are taking this more into account. It’s not going to happen fast enough.”
“Don’t wait for the UN to solve climate change: make it your job. We must step up to the challenge, as individuals.”
“We’ve got the best planet in the universe here. Let’s not ruin it.”
