Scott Berkun's Blog, page 42

The 177 Myths of Innovation: Mega web summary

The term “Myths of Innovation” has become popular on the web, but few of these articles link to each other, which is sad.

Somehow in all this talk about innovation many writers have forgotten inventions like web searches, links and footnotes to credit what others have done.

As a response I’ve compiled a chronological list of articles using the term. I’d like to make a definitive list of Innovation Myths and I’m happy to update this if you find more to add.  Surprisingly these lists are all broadly written – none are comprised of specific invention stories that are fabrications.

I came up with the term independently in April of 2002 for a lecture at Microsoft that eventually became the book. I hadn’t heard the term before but it’s entirely likely someone else had used it for an article, paper or post somewhere. The earliest use I found online in creating this post is Veitch, below.

The Complete list of Innovation Myths

1/31/2001 Innovation Myths, Open Future, John Veitch

Innovators had happy lives
Innovators can succeed alone
You must stay positive
You can remember everything

6/30/2002, Innovation Survey, PriceWaterCooper, Frank Milton (pub date unverified)

Only small/new companies innovate
One great idea is all we need
It’s better to play safe
Innovation is a part-time activity

9/24/2004, The Seven Myths of Innovation, Financial Times, Sawhney/Wolcott

You need more new ideas
Innovation is a department
Let people loose
Innovation is a radical departure
Mistakes are costly
Avoid the detours
Innovation is about creating new things

12/1/2004, 6 Myths of Creativity, Fast Company, Bill Breen

Creativity comes from creative types
Money is a motivator
Time pressure fuels creativity
Fear forces breakthroughs
Competition beats collaboration
Streamline organization is a creative organization

12/2005, Innovation myths, Innovate on Purpose, Jeffrey Phillips

You can’t manage innovation
People won’t use processes
There’s no defined process
Too much management stifles creativity

2/2006, Excerpt From Innovation Handbook: A Roadmap to Disruptive Growth, Clayton Christensen/Scott Anthony

Innovation is all about technology
More resources equal more innovation
Only a big bang counts as a success
Innovation is random and unpredictable
You can’t teach people to be more innovative

2/3/2006, Top Ten Innovation Myths, Geoffrey Moore

We don’t innovate here no more
Product cycles are getting shorter
We need a chief innovation officer
We need to be more like Google
R&D investment indicates innovation commitment
Great innovators are usually egotistical mavericks
Innovation is inherently disruptive
It is good to innovate
Innovation is hard
When innovation dies, it’s because antibodies kill it

6/13/2006, The Myths About Innovation, The Straits Times, Atul Mathur

Innovation is for other industries
Innovation is inventing new product
Innovation is R&D
Innovation is for giants
Innovation is optional

6/06/2006,  Five Innovation Myths,  McKinney / Jim McNerney

It’s the solitary genius who is responsible
It’s all about technology
If it isn’t ‘new to the world’ it’s not innovation
Innovation can’t be managed
Creativity and discipline are mortal enemies

5/2007, The Myths of Innovation (the book), O’Reilly Media, Scott Berkun

The myth of epiphany
We understand the history of innovation
There is a method
People love new ideas
The lone inventor
Good ideas are hard to find
Your boss knows more than you
The best idea wins
Problems are less interesting than solutions
Innovation is always good
(A detailed free summary of the book is here)
(A partial list of ranked references from the book)

12/10/2008, Myths of Innovation, Industry Week, Jill Jusko

Innovation applies to technology and products
Innovation is a long term project
Innovation happens by chance

7/16/08, Seven Myths of Innovation, CyberJournalist

Always keep your eye on the ball
Failure is not an option
Everyone loves an innovator
Innovators are problem solvers
Knowledge is Power
Innovation can be predicted
First place always wins

4/09, Four Dangerous Myths, American Management Association, Paddy Miller, Spring 2009

Creativity should be fun
All ideas are good
Innovation is Entrepreneurship
The Creative Imperative

6/29/09,  Six Myths of Innovation, CIO Insight,  Samuel Greengard

Technology drives innovation
If you pursue innovation, it will come
Innovation results from an outside-in perspective
Bad things will happen if you open up your business processes
Vendors understand your business and IT better than you do
A tight budget stifles innovation.

2/22/2010, Five Damaging Myths about Innovation, Biznik, Jeanne Yocum

An innovation can be purchased
All we need are some good new ideas
I’ll recognize breakthroughs when I see them
We just implemented a great idea, we can rest
(There was no 5th myth)

12/16/10, The 5 Myths of Innovation, Sloan Review MIT (Julian Birkinshaw, Cyril Bouquet and J.-L. Barsoux)

Eureka Moment
Build it and They Will Come
Open Innovation is the Future
Pay Is Paramount
Bottom Up Innovation is Best

7/20/2010, 4 Myths that get in the way of Innovation, CBS, Margaret Heffernan

Innovation involves Quantum Leaps
Only Geeks May Apply
Innovation Requires off-sites with Geniuses
Innovators are a Special Breed

9/14/2010, Beware of these Ten Myths about Innovation Business Insider, Martin Zwilling

Innovation is all about ideas
A great leader never fails at innovation
Effective Innovation leaders fight the system
Everyone can be an innovator
Real innovation happens bottoms-up
Innovation can be embedded inside an organization
Initiating Innovation requires wholesale change
Innovation can only happen in skunk works
Innovation is unmanageable chaos
Only startups can innovate

3/2011, The 7 Common Myths of Innovation, CEO Refresher, George Chen Ian Pallister

Innovation can’t be taught
Breakthrough innovation occurs through stroke of genius
Innovation is solely the job of R&D
Innovation is risky
Innovation is about commercializing cutting edge technologies
Innovation is expensive
Innovation is disruptive and dilutes focus

4/8/2011, Dispelling the Myths about Innovation, Formico, Peter Boggis

Creativity and Innovation are the same thing
Innovation is only relevant for consumer companies
“Innovation just happens”
Business value if innovation is difficult to measure
Innovation requires deep pockets, risk-embracing and bleeding edge technology

10/2011, The Innovation Myths, Harvard Business, Scott Anthony

Innovation is random
Only geniuses can innovate
You’re either an innovator or not
Innovation happens in the R&D lab
We will win with technology
Innovation is about improved performace
Customer will be a critical source
Game changing innovation is done by entrepreneurs
We win by targeting big markets
Innovation requires big bets

10/28/2011, Myths and realities about Innovation, CNBC, Benjamin Hallen

Innovation comes from isolated geniuses
Innovation is about a eureka moment
Great innovations will be easily recognized

5/12/2011, 10 Myths of Innovation, Jon Gatrell

Innovation is all about ideas
The great leader never fails
Leaders are only fighting the system
Everyone can be an innovator
Innovation happens organically
Can be inside an establish organization
Requires wholesale organizational change
Innovation can only happen in Skunk Works
Innovation is unmanageable chaos
Only start-ups can innovate

8/4/2011, Bust Your Innovation Myths, Art Markman

We glorify eureka moments
We assume legendary stories are true
Myths are slanted towards great people and decisive events

9/8/2011, Debunking the Myths of Innovation, Jim Stikeleather, Dell

You can’t ask customers what they need
Faster, better, cheaper
Bringing disruptive innovations is never easy

10/24/2011, Innovation is About Execution, Despite the Myths, Forbes, Martin Zwilling

Innovation is all about ideas
A great leader never fails
Effective innovation leaders are subversives
Everyone can be an innovator
Real innovation is bottom up
Innovation can be embedded in an organization
Innovation requires wholesale change
Innovation happens in skunk works
Innovation is unmanageable chaos
Only startups can innovate

11/3/2011, Three Myths about Innovation, Jim Stikeleather

Successful innovation requires disruptive revolution
You have to be creative (egotistical) to be innovative
Innovation is expensive

12/19/2011, Relentless Innovation – Debunking the Myths, U. of Texas, Jeffrey Phillips

 Some industries seem more innovative than others
Fast following innovators can suceed
(Mentions The book The Myths of Innovation)

2/24/2011, 5 Myths of Innovation, Haydn Shaugnessy, Forbes

It’s all about creativity
Innovation is about motivation
Innovation is about the user
Innovation is about products and services
Innovation is good

1/4/2012, The Myths of Innovation, James Gardner, Computer Weekly

If you invest in something new you have better chances of windfall returns

2/7/2012, Debunking 4 myths of innovation, FastCoDesign, Jeffrey Phillips

Individual innovative leadership accounts for success
Level of industry competition dictates the amount of innovation
It’s possible to copy market leaders while retaining  competitive advantage

2/12/2012, Five Myths of Innovation, Gartner.com

This list is behind a $495 paywall :(

2/20/2013,  7 Myths of Innovation, Fast Bridge

It is what we do behind closed doors
Innovation just happens
We need to reward innovation
It is about working harder
Real innovation is about adjacent possible
You need the best people
It’s about selecting the best ideas

4/2/2013 (From the future!), 5 Innovation Myths Busted, Flanders, Vladimir Blagojevic

Innovation = creativity + ideas
Innovation = something new
Innovation = great products
Validating innovation = fundraise
Technical Innovations = scalable and automated

How this list was compiled

I used a series of Google, Yahoo and Bing searches, focusing on different date ranges and permutations on “Myths of Innovation”.  Search engines are better in some ways than when I wrote the book, as more data is now available on the web. I prioritized articles, posts or presentations that used the words Myth and Innovation somewhere in the title, including some that used the terms Myths and Creativity.

Many posts I found are cross-references of the same links, with interviews with authors of books/posts about myths they’d written about elsewhere and I only listed each list once. If you find other items I should add, please leave a comment.

Thanks for helping spread Mindfire (the report in numbers)

Thanks to everyone who spread the word about the free download of my book Mindfire.

As of this moment the free download is up, but I’ll be shutting it down shortly.

There is a surprisingly long echo effect on social media and I’d hate for someone who just saw a tweet of mine to be turned away empty handed.

In case you are curious here are the resulting numbers:

11500 people downloaded a copy of the book
About 2000 downloaded the book, but immediately unsubscribed (10% of total) or put in a bogus email address (about 7%)
Roughly 40% PDF, 30% Mobi, 30% Epub
1887 verified tweets, 1181 Facebook shares
It ran from 8am Wednesday until now (~100 hours instead of the promised 48), but 70% of downloads were in first 3 days

It was a great success, especially for a book that has been out for a year.

I’m grateful for your support and I’ll get back to work on the next book.

 

Vote on the cover for my next book

A few weeks ago you voted on the title for my next book. Thanks to your help that decision has been made:

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work.

The book follows the behind the scenes story of my year working for Automattic, Inc, the makers of WordPress.com and what I learned from working in a 100% remote based, email-free,  open-source fueled working culture. It was a fascinating experience in many ways and the book teaches everything I learned about management, leadership, creativity and organizations.

I’ve been working with the folks at Jossey-Bass on the cover design. Here are 4 concepts – Which direction is best? Place you vote.

Option A

 

Option B

 

Option C

 

Option D




Take Our Poll

 

If you want to be notified when the book is on-sale and get access to exclusive content, sign up here.

 

The Ten Myths of Innovation: the best summary

I wrote the popular book The Myths of Innovation to capture everything I wish I’d been told before I started my career.  I’ve seen bloggers summarize the book into a simple list (or cheezy video), but here’s a version written by my own hand.

The book was heavily researched with 100s of footnotes and references, but here’s the tightest summation:

The myth of epiphany. Few mention the millions of “epiphanies” people have had that ended in years of failure. We love stories of flashes of insight and they dominate how creativity is reported.  Epiphany stories project illusions of certainty since they’re always about successful ideas. Epiphanies are a consequence of effort, not just the inspiration for it. When you hear a story about a flash of insight, the useful questions to ask are 1) how much time the creator spent working before it happened and 2) how much work they did after to make the idea successful. An epiphany doesn’t find investors, make prototypes, sacrifice free time or persist in the face of rejection: only you can do that and you’ll have to do it without a guarantee of success. 
The myth that we know history. We romanticize the past to fit the present, creating traps for creatives who don’t know the chaotic history of their own field. Innovation is OLD. The tactics for trying to change the present are ancient.  Why did America succeed when 90+% of revolutions fail? Was there anything really special about the Rosetta Stone? Dominant ideas aren’t necessarily good ones. Find the biggest idea in your field and dig in: you’ll be surprised at what you find beneath the surface that helps your work in the present (see Myth #8: the best idea wins).
The myth of a method. The challenge with creative work, especially in a marketplace, is the many factors beyond your control. You can do everything right and still fail. Most books on creativity make big promises based on history: they cherry pick examples from the past and claim it’s predictive. Methods can be useful but they deny that the present is different from the past. There are too many variables in the present to have certainty. This is why terms like innovation system or innovation pipeline are absurd. The idea of an innovation portfolio, where a range of risk is assumed, is more honest. Many books on creativity are surprisingly uncreative (lightbulbs should be banned from creativity book covers) and unreal.
 The myth we love new ideas. We are a conservative species: try something as simple as standing, rather than sitting, in your next group meeting. How accepting were your peers? Conformity is deep in our biology. While talking about creativity is very popular, actually being creative puts your social status at risk. All great ideas were rejected, often for years or decades, yet we bury this in our history (see Myth #1 & #2). The history of breakthroughs is a tale of persistence against rejection. Much of what makes a successful innovator is their ability to persuade and convince conservative people of the merits of their ideas, a very different skill from creativity itself. Your problem is likely not your ideas, but your skills for pitching ideas to others. Ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. The bigger the idea, the harder the persuasion challenge.
The myth of the lone inventor. It’s easier to worship a hero if they are portrayed as superhuman. But even people worthy of the title genius or prodigy like Mozart, Picasso and Einstein had family and teachers who taught them things. Many of Edison’s patents are shared with co-workers, as despite his huge ego he knew collaboration was critical (His Menlo Park office was one of the first research labs). Stories of mad geniuses who worked completely alone are rare. Pick any master who you think worked alone and read some of their history: you’ll be surprised how many people influenced their work. Learning to collaborate, and give and receive feedback, may matter more than your brilliance.
The myth that good ideas are rare. If you watch any 6 year old child they will invent dozens of things in an hour. We are built for creativity. The problem is the conventions of adult life demand conformity and we sacrifice our creative instincts in favor of social status. Unlike a child, adults are supremely and instantly judgmental, killing ideas before they’ve had even a moment to prove their worth. It’s easy to rediscover creativity, which is why brainstorming rarely helps much. We’re already creative. The challenge is ideas don’t come with the courage to invest in them. Good ideas are everywhere: what’s uncommon is people with the conviction to put their reputation behind ideas.
The myth your boss knows more than you. A fallacy of workplaces is that senior staff are better at everything than the people who work for them. This is false in many ways, but creative intuition might be the most false. To rise in power demands good political judgement, yet innovation requires a willingness to defy convention. Convention-defiers are harder to promote in most organizations, yet essential for progress. To assume senior staff are the best at leading change is a mistake.
The myth the best idea wins. We lionize winners and history blames losers for their fate. Marketing, politics and timing have tremendous influence of why one idea or its competitors wins, yet these details are more complex than we want to hear. It’s satisfying to believe the best idea has won in the past, because it’s something we want to believe about the present too. But to be successful with ideas demands studying why some lousy ideas have triumphed (Why doesn’t the U.S. use the metric system?), and some great ones are still on the sidelines. The world of ideas is not a pure meritocracy and you need to act accordingly.
The myth than problems are less interesting than solutions. Eintsein said “If I had 20 days to solve a problem I would take 19 to define it.” There are many creative ways to think about a problem, and different ways to look at a situation. The impatient run at full speed into solving things, speeding right past the insights needed to find a great solution. If you listen to how successful creators talk about their daily work, they spend more time thinking about the problem than epiphany obsessed media would have us believe.
The myth innovation is always good. How would you feel about an invention that ends your profession? What impact will an idea have 1,5,10,100 years from now? All innovation is change and all change helps some people and hurts others. Many horrible inventions were created with the best intentions (and some horrible intentions led to some good consequences). Benz and Ford never imagined automobiles would kill 40k people annually in the U.S. And the Wright brothers never imagined Predator drones. Any successful idea has a multitude of consequences that are impossible to predict and difficult to even measure.

If you liked this, you’ll love the depth, detailed lessons and entertaining stories in the book. It includes 4 chapters, nearly 1/3rd of the book, specifically about how to apply all the lessons in your work and world.

It’s strange to see a book I worked on for many years compressed this way – I hope you found it compelling.

Why We Love Sociopaths: Interview

Last week I reviewed the book Why We Love Sociopaths: a guide to late capitalist television and I enjoyed it so much I asked the author, Adam Kotsko for an interview. To my delight he agreed.

SB: Your book elegantly frames why we’re attracted to TV shows involving sociopathic behavior. Do you have a theory about when television shifted from more balanced dramas to a world where many of the popular shows involve sociopathy? The Sopranos is often referenced as the show that changed television and (re)introduced moral ambiguity to popular television drama: do you agree?



AK: The Sopranos was definitely a turning point, but I think the ground was actually prepared by reality television. By their very nature, those shows are about scheming and backstabbing — and as interesting and daring as Sopranos is in a lot of ways, it’s fundamentally about just that type of “office politics”-style conflict (although “voting someone off the island” obviously takes a very different form). In terms of a cultural turning point, though, it’s harder to pinpoint. American culture has always been very individualistic, utilitarian, or — to put it bluntly — greedy, but popular culture has most often tended to try to provide some kind of moral veneer or cushion. In many cases that was hypocritical sentimentality, but I’m not sure that the more recent trend toward openly embracing selfishness is to be preferred simply because it’s “more honest” or something.

If I were held at gunpoint and forced to choose a cultural moment that opened up this possibility, though, I’d say it was the end of the Cold War. Suddenly America no longer had a transcendent mission, and it no longer had to pretend that capitalism was some kind of moral force for good against the unmitigated evil of communism. And I think it’s really telling that once another transcendent mission presented itself — in the form of our farcical overreaction to terrorism — the moral sense was totally and radically absent. We perceived ourselves as entitled to openly violate all norms of law and human rights for the sake of facing this “existential threat.” It was as though the nation as a whole was echoing the archetypal reality show contestant who declares, “I’m not here to make friends!”

SB. What motivated you to write this book? There are many popular criticisms of television as both a medium and for its content, but your approach was both novel, approachable and specific. Did you have a personal stake in trying to call attention to this trend?

AK: I did Awkwardness as a kind of experiment with a more popular form of writing. I did Sociopaths because I wanted to go further in that direction — my explicit academic trappings are much more subdued in the second book — and simply because I felt as though I had hit on an interesting cultural trend that no one else was really talking about as such. On a more personal level, I basically didn’t want to let my idea go to waste — and more broadly, I was attracted to the idea that I could “redeem” my time spent watching all these shows by putting that to work in my writing.

SB: Clearly you watched many of these shows. Were, or are you, a fan of any of them? Do you see dangers in enjoying shows centered on individuals with major psychological issues? (or, more broadly, do you believe television has a desensitizing impact on American culture (e.g. Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death)?)

It’s probably clear from the book that I’m a big fan of the Wire, which I perhaps spent more time on than is warranted by its popularity. I still watch Mad Men avidly, and I’ve picked up on other shows in the sociopath style — Boardwalk Empire, Justified, etc. I’ve winnowed my TV watching over the years, compared to my more omnivorous habits during graduate school, and so I probably would not have devoted as much time to something like Dexter or stuck with House as long as I did if I were starting them now.

On the issue of how these shows are affecting people, I’m less concerned about that than I am about the culture and institutions that shape them into the kind of person that identifies with the sociopathic social climber. There’s always going to be a certain fascination in the outlaw figure, but the systematic glorification of the sociopath betrays a deeply sick society in my opinion.

Whatever effect TV shows are having on people, I think that the way their workplaces and schools function has a much bigger impact — and both of those institutions are structured increasingly as an ongoing competition where loyalty or morality seems like a liability. If people who live every day in that kind of environment need to let off some steam by identifying with Tony Soprano for a couple hours, I don’t begrudge them.

——————–

If you watch television you should go read Why We Love Sociopaths: a guide to late capitalist television

How to get your name in my books

A few weeks ago I asked for . I promised to include their names in the 1.1 edition and I delivered. Here are the photos:

And their names appear in the acknowledgements of the 1.1 edition:

If you’re jealous, or think you can do better (these photos were tame I admit) – take a photo and leave a link to it in the comments.

I’ll at least highlight you on the blog, and if there’s a 1.2 edition you’ll get your name in too.

Have fun!

Learning from how Mindfire was made

To help celebrate the launch of Mindfire 1.1 (free for 48 hours), here’s a round up of the many behind the scenes posts I wrote.  One goal for the book was to learn about self-publishing, and I love to share things I’ve learned.

Why give a book away for free
Why I decided to self-publish
How to get wise
What I learned from the book launch party
Confessions of a self-published author
How to design a great book cover

 

 

Making Things Happen: Kindle edition news

I’ve heard a handful of reports of issues with the Kindle edition of Making Things Happen.  I talked to O’Reilly Media and they tracked down the issue.

Apparently there was a pirated version of the book listed on Amazon that some people purchased. It has been taken down.

The real, official version can be found on Amazon here.

Get Mindfire 1.1 Free for the next 48 hours

Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds is a collection of my best and most provocative essays. It’s short, fast, fun and inspiring. Its been revised, cleaned up, and polished for your enjoyment.

To celebrate and thank all of you readers, the book is available for FREE for 48 hours.

All you have to do is go here:

http://scottberkun.com/book-download/

Please spread the word. Thanks for reading my work.

P.S. If you purchased the book recently, you likely already have 1.1. You can verify by looking at “Printing History” in the early pages. If it says 1.1, you’re golden.

Blame the speaker or the organizer?

Linda at Cook for Good asked me about Godin’s recent post Communication is a path, not an event:

The other day, I heard the CEO of a large corporation drone on for twenty minutes. He was pitching a large group of strangers, reading them a long, prepared speech that was largely irrelevant to their needs. They weren’t there to hear him and in fact, weren’t even able to hear him over the buzz in their heads… this was classic interruption, no permission granted.

If you’d interviewed the 150 people in the room an hour later, no one could have told you a single thing about what he had said. If your tactic is to have a one-shot, the equivalent of a pickup line in a singles’ bar, it’s pretty hopeless. You can’t sell anything complex or risky in this way.

Many speakers are bad, it’s true.

Organizers have to balance 3 improbable criteria of: find experts, who are good speakers and are available. Many CEOs have lawyers vet their talks, reuse the same material and are boring speakers anyway. But a CEO of a company can be a draw for an event, helping fill the seats, an objective that has only some relationship to the quality of speakers.

He mentions three classic mistakes:

Long speech
Poorly prepared (you can spend 10 hours preparing poorly)
Irrelevant to the audience

But he offers a curious suggestion:

On the other hand, what if he had taken three minutes (just three) to say, “Let’s talk.” Give out his personal contact info or an easy way (and a good reason!) to engage with his staff. And then give up the podium and let the event go forward.

But the problem isn’t the speaker alone, it’s the organizer too. The organizer asked for what he saw. The organizer could have asked for something else, but didn’t. The organizer chose that speaker out of 6 billion people on the planet and gave them that particular slot. The speaker could have suggested something else, but they’d need the organizer’s permission to do it. And besides, speaking is an ego-centric activity: to ask for less time is nearly unheard of.

TED and other events have 3 or 5 minute slots to mix up the pace, which is a good. But this needs to be planned. To surprise organizers and the audience with a 17 minute gap makes their work harder. It’s good manners to use less time than offered to help the day catch up, but more can cause problems.

More broadly, people want to see speakers speak, that’s why they paid money to come to an an event comprised of a series of speakers. Organizers want speakers to speak too, and carefully plan how much time they need each speaker to have the stage for. Both audiences and organizers are optimists. They assume the speakers will do well and will feel insulted if someone slotted for 20 minutes left the stage with 17 minutes to spare.

Doing what Godin suggests might be preferable to a bad twenty minute talk, but not as good as a well done 10 minute talk.

The simplest answer is in the middle ground of basic advice Godin skips over:

Make your talk shorter – if given 20 minutes, use 15
plan the talk around questions the audience wants answered
practice the speech, but don’t memorize it

In summary, when I see a bad talk I blame everyone:

An open letter to conference organizers
An open letter to speakers