I agree; if everyone had such a naive and cynical attitude about what was and was not viable, possible, or price-worthy it would certainly become self-fulfilling. Thankfully many truly "innovative" men have proved the rest of the sheep that live in the box to be wrong over and over and over. Those lacking innovation will never understand that just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean it can't be done.
I.E.
- Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.
- Editorial in the Boston Post (1865) - Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean.
- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1838) Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College, London - "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
- "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
- "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
- "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
- "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." -- Lee DeForest, inventor.
- "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
- "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" -- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
- "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
- "That Professor Goddard with his 'chair' in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react--to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. The remark was retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.
- "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." -- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
- "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
- "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
- "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
- "There will never be a bigger plane built." -- A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
- "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.
Hey... Thanks for putting that together!
Some people have a place in innovative thinking, other people have a place in their own strong suit. Some are great at starting up new companies, but can't keep one alive to save themselves. Others are masters at keeping them alive, but are clueless to the innovation (can do attitude) and knowledge it takes to start a successful business. There's a place for both.
A few highlights from the last 100 years or so...
The first automobile
The first airplane
Space travel
Personal computers
Test tube babies
Cloning of animals
Nuclear fusion
The growing of a human jawbone from a persons "own" stem cells inside their abdomen (saw the story on it last week).
Almost every one of those things was invented by a nation of innovators. The U.S. and capitalism in general inspires creative thinking. We even have a saying... "Si se puede" (yes it can be done)... LOL - sorry couldn't resist the joke, borrowed that one from South of the border (they're annexing our Southern states so it's becoming familiar to us). 
There will always be naysayers and there will always be innovators, but in the end the only thing that remains the same is "change". I'm happy Sigma is being innovative in this new camera and hope they take the ball and run with it for a while.
