"We usually find oil in a new place with old ideas. Sometimes, we find oil in an old place with a new idea, but we seldom find much oil in an old place with an old idea. Several times in the past we have thought that we were running out of oil, whereas actually we were running out of ideas.” - Parke A. Dickey, 1958
Mr. Dickey made this quote 64 years ago, but it seems to fit perfectly with the present day. I remember being told in high school that the world was running out of oil and gas and there was no future in this industry. Then some innovative people figured out how to combine horizontal drilling with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, and BOOM, the shale revolution started! As it turns out, we weren't running out of oil and gas, we had just run out of ideas. When we embrace innovative and outside-the-box ideas, it's amazing what we can come up with.
Today’s advice is simple: be creative, think outside-the-box, and never let yourself run out of ideas.