Yiting's comments (member since Jul 01, 2009)

Yiting's comments from the MIT Club of Great Britain Book Club group.

Review by Indranath Neogy

I was attracted to this book because I have, as I suspect we all do, my own feelings about what makes for innovation, heavily influenced by time spent at MIT. Of course, one can’t help but suspect that some romanticism about “how innovation happens” lurks not only amongst those memories of MIT, but also in the way innovation has become a buzzword throughout commentary on business and national affairs.

Scott Berkun, then, gives us a chance to step back from all the hype about
innovation and take a critical look at some of the common beliefs circulating around us. The book is composed of ten chapters, each dealing with a mythical aspect of innovation that has gained common currency. As the author notes, the chapters are independent enough to read out of order, but the sense of the book builds if read conventionally.

The book is written with a light touch, which definitely brought a wry smile to my face every now and then. This is especially useful because I think all of us will have assimilated at least one of these myths in part and the gentle and humorous tone gets past the inner defences and lets us admit that maybe “I did tend to think that and it doesn’t look that correct in the light of day.” Of course, it also makes for easier reading and whilst there are quite a few footnotes, many of them are references to retellings of history (including quite a few Wikipedia links) rather than heavy duty
academic studies. As such this book is more a narrative of our relationship with innovation than a cast iron hypothesis.

The chapters cover:
1) The myth of epiphany.
Berkun reminds us that, sadly, ideas don’t really come out of thin air. I think we all fall into hoping they will at times, but this chapter reminds us that when the “final piece of the puzzle” arrives, it’s only valuable because of the hard work put into assembling all the other pieces first.

2) The belief that we understand the history of innovation.
Here the major culprit is our human tendency to make narratives out of
history. We draw a straight line from (for example) the silicon chip to the iPod with a few stop for the Walkman and the hard disk, but forget all the small inventions, especially the dead end ones, along the way. That leaves us with an impression of brilliance followed by further brilliance, ignoring the
experimentation and necessary following of leads into blind alleys that
brought us to the present day.
3) The myth of a method for innovation.
Scott Berkun uses the narrow sense of the word method, as in an instance of a methodology, a formula that you can articulate for everyone else to just follow along, like a cooking recipe. His point is that no such recipe for
innovation exists, rather every innovator takes a slightly different route. He
identifies some general conditions that could be helpful, but that is as far as he feels we can go.

4) The idea that new ideas automatically find a welcome.
In this chapter, the author undertakes to remind us that while everybody
“talks the talk” about innovation being a vital part of modern life, when faced
with the reality of an innovation people often don’t like to change. This isn’t
just because they are obtuse, but because they may often have a lot to lose from the change involved.

5) The myth of the lone inventor.
Instinctively, we should know this, but we often forget. No work stands alone, it builds on the work of others. Sometimes it is the “prior art” of others in the field, sometimes it is the teamwork of a design collaboration, but nothing comes into this world purely through the aegis of one person.

6) The concept that finding good ideas is the key stumbling block.
If you’re willing to put some effort in, Berkun demonstrates that there are
multiple techniques for coming up with ideas and these work for all sorts of
people, whether they label themselves as creative or not. Of course, the
second edge to this sword is that innovation isn’t just about coming up with
the idea, but the hard work to make it a reality.

7) The idea that your boss knows more about innovation than you.
This chapter doesn’t just concentrate on the fact that managers can kill
innovation through cynicism and conservatism, it usefully explores how
managers can help create an environment where innovation is more likely.

8) The myth that the best ideas win.
Disappointingly, this chapter recycles (like so many) the stories of firearms in Japan and the QWERTY keyboard. That aside, it is a useful listing of many of the oft-forgotten factors that influence the adoption of an innovation.

9) Myths about problems and solutions.
There are three main arguments in this chapter. The first is that the nature of innovation is such that you do not always find the solution to the problem you were investigating. (One example involves the creation of the microwave oven.) This then raises two issues: How can you ensure that you benefit even when this occurs? The author’s answer is in an open state of mind, to make sure you inquire into various phenomena that cross your path. The other issue is how to improve the alignment of problems and solutions. Berkun here emphasises the framing of the problem and the use of experiments and prototypes to keep the solution domain focused on the problem at hand.

10) The myth that innovation is always good.
I think this one is not a surprise to any of us. Not only do most innovations lead to changes that are positive to some, but negative for others, but the history of technology is shadowed by the example of nuclear technology, which has had positive aspects and seems to have even more in the future, but has attached to it the horrors of annihilation. Thus, we are reminded that the rush to innovation has unpredictable effects and we should be wary of those who preach only constant change, because they likely haven’t thought through what they are talking about.

I found that the most useful aspect of the book was the perspective on “how we got here” in terms of modern technologies. The reminder that things progressed in an evolutionary manner, through experimentation and with plenty of dead ends along with way not only explained for me why innovation needs special attention if it to thrive, but gave me a little more hope for my own creative efforts.

Likewise, I must admit that the reminder that good ideas don’t always get a welcoming reception is a reminder to keep trying, even when people don’t seem interested. For all that some parts of the book strip away the romance of innovation (the epiphany and the lone inventor) and precluded easy answers (especially Chapter Three) I felt that the narrative here was definitely encouraging and I’d recommend it not just to those who might manage innovation but those involved at the ground level too.

Reviewed by Indranath Neogy

Now, you may be inclined to ask, first of all, what is HE thinking, when the first review is of a book published by “that other school” and written by a Professor of Organizational Behaviour from Stanford. My defence is only that this is an interesting book and potentially useful book. Subtitled “Unconventional wisdom about management” it is made up of independent chapters, based on editions of Pfeffer’s column “The Human Factor” in Business 2.0 magazine. That structure is convenient as it can be read in any order, perfect for dipping into every now and then.

I think every one of us has seen an organisation leap into action to turn around troubled times, using the latest and greatest management fashion. MIT students of a similar vintage to me will recall the ongoing “Re-engineering” effort under Charles Vest and I’m sure each of us has stories to tell of similar efforts from our working lives. I would guess that some of those efforts failed and in a way that many in the organisation could see was going to happen.

If you’ve had that experience, you will have confronted two difficulties. Sometimes you have an instinctive feel for how the system is going to “blowback” but find it difficult to articulate the chain of actions. Other times, you can explain what is going to happen, but lack the evidence to make a really convincing argument. This book can help in both cases. In bringing his columns to book form, Pfeffer has taken the opportunity to expound his arguments further and add substantial notes on the evidence he uses to back up his ideas. However, as he notes it isn’t “going to tell you specifically what you ought to do. Each person’s company and circumstances are too different ... to offer advice about what particular actions to take.” Rather the aim is to expand our thinking overall.

The book is divided into five sections. The first is “People-Centred Strategies” and begins with a short chapter on the value of people in improving customer service vs. that of CRM (customer relationship management) software. It is apparent straight away that Pfeffer’s store of anecdotes and illustrations focus on companies in the United States, particularly his home state of California. It’s not a big criticism, but as
someone who hasn’t lived in California for some years, I did have to rack my brains a few times to get the context for the logic of his stories.

Further chapters cover a host of well-known hot issues like the ethics of today’s managers, the consequences of shedding employees and salary freezes when a company is in trouble, the (lack of) value to many mergers and acquisitions. Of course, each of these topics would take a book in itself to document fully and that is one problem. If you are particularly familiar with any of the topics discussed, you’re likely to feel the treatment is a bit superficial. The discussion of performance-related pay, for instance, clearly makes sense to me, but the evidence presented in the notes doesn’t really do justice to the volume (and ambiguity) of research into the
topic.

Pfeffer articulates three common themes across his collection of “unconventional wisdom”: “Feedback effects”, “A More Nuanced View of What Motivates People and Makes Organizations Successful” and “Sometimes the Right Answer is Obvious.” This last category is perhaps the most problematic, because (as in the chapter on Persistence) the reader is left feeling a bit short-changed. I think we all know already
that persistence is important and that it has to be mated with an inquiring approach rather than pure rigid stubbornness. So, as a personal message, it’s not a revelation and as an organisational message, the chapter doesn’t really give a lot meat to help convince others to change their way of acting.

Despite these small criticisms, so long as you’re not an expert in every facet of the business world, I would suggest that you’ll get a lot out of this book. The conclusions reached probably aren’t news to you, but the careful exposition of logic behind the all too familiar unintended consequences of conventional business wisdom and the hints towards an unconventional and potentially more accurate view of organisational life are useful to everyone.