The Myths of Innovation

cgjherr writes "Ah, the technology history book, normally I'm not a fan. The writing is aloof and dry. The topics are vague, the history misinterpreted, and the lessons presented too vague to be applicable. And don't get me started on the illustrations, which are all too often pyramids with the authors perched at the top looking down on the lowly reader at the base. Thankfully, this book, "the myths of innovation" breaks all of these rules. It's an engaging, fun and quick read. The history is interesting, and the lessons presented are practical. I particularly like the author's tone. It's witty and light. Which makes this a very fast read, one that leaves you wanting even more by the end." Read below for the rest of Jack's review. The Myths of Innovation author Scott Berkun pages 176 publisher O'Reilly rating Excellent reviewer Jack Herrington ISBN 0596527055 summary The history of innovation with lessons learned The myths of innovation is about how innovation happens in the real world in companies, universities and garages around the company. The first two chapters really draw the reader in by showing the twin fallacies of the epiphany moment and the historically clean line of innovation. Learning that innovation doesn't just come as a flash, and that lots of successes have come out of copious failure encourages us to try to innovate, and to keep trying even when we believe we have failed.

This short book (147 pages of content) is presented in ten short chapters. The first two show you how anyone can be an innovator. You can think of those as the debunking chapters. The third chapter is where the author starts helping you to build some techniques to innovate. He presents how there are some reasonable methods to spur innovation and shows examples from Apple, Google, Edison, Craiglist and more.

In chapter four he shows how to overcome peoples fears of innovation and overcome the common problems with the adoption of new technologies. Chapter five, "the lone innovator", debunks the legend of, well, the lone innovator. It sounds good, and plays into our noble story of the hero, but it's not common in reality. Chapter six talks about ideas and surveys where innovators have found the ideas that they start out with. Of course, where you start is often not where you end but that's ok, since innovation is a lot more about failure than it is about success.

Chapter seven covers something I think most of us can relate to, which is that managers aren't often the innovators. Chapter eight talks about how we believe that the "best ideas always win" but that's least often the case. This sounds pessimistic, but it's actually an interesting study in how the biggest product with the most feature isn't always the best for the customer. Chapter nine, "problems and solutions", talks about framing problems to constrain the creativity and innovation. The final chapter, "innovation is always good", is at the same time the most amusing and disturbing. It covers innovations from the automobile to DDT and presents that innovation, no matter what, is always good. Agree or disagree the points are well presented.

As I say I really enjoyed this book. It's an easy read that is hard to put down. What's more it's really motivating. After reading this book you will want to dig right back into those crazy ideas lurking around in the back of your mind and give them another shot. With this book, you will have a few more tools at your disposal to turn your ideas into reality.

You can purchase The Myths of Innovation from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

No, I won't.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

After reading this book you will want to dig right back into those crazy ideas lurking around in the back of your mind and give them another shot.

No, I won't. Remember...

Chapter five, "the lone innovator", debunks the legend of, well, the lone innovator. It sounds good, and plays into our noble story of the hero, but it's not common in reality.

...and...

Chapter eight talks about how we believe that the "best ideas always win" but that's least often the case.

Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[Kazrath]

Isn't the whole point of innovation to come up with some new idea. Reading a book about how to innovate may give assistance in helping to broaden your ability to "Think outside the box". The title leads me to believe that I will become an innovator just by mimicking someone else.

I truly believe inventors or true innovators are not made but born. Anyone can learn to do something but only people with a knack or talent will do it well.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[jcgf]

I truly believe inventors or true innovators are not made but born. Anyone can learn to do something but only people with a knack or talent will do it well.

Beliefs like that lead one down the road of mediocrity.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[dpaton.net]

Innovation can be taught too. Ask anyone who has gone through the TRIZ process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ

It's not rocket science, it's a new way of thinking about problems and their solutions.

Some people are born with it, others are taught it. The results are essentially the same for all but the most esoteric and rare cases.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[Gulthek]

I truly believe inventors or true innovators are not made but born. Anyone can learn to do something but only people with a knack or talent will do it well.

Beliefs like that lead one down the road of mediocrity.

Sometimes, that's exactly where one should go!

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[scribblej]

Beliefs like that lead one down the road of mediocrity.

Seconded. I'm not a brilliant programmer because I was born coding. I'm not a brilliant programmer because I have a "knack" or "innate talent." I'm a brilliant programmer because I spend all of my time studying and doing it; I work very hard to draw distinctions other people miss, and I seek out feedback and seek to always improve.

The GP's suggestion that some people are just "naturally" good at some things shows a startling lack of understanding about the educational process. You show me a good XYZer and I'll show you someone who's put a lot of effort into XYZing.

Those people who you hear about who are "naturally talented" fall into one of two categories:

1) They are talented and spent a lot of time and effort getting that way, you just fail to see the time and effort -- you are just seeing the "end product."

or

2) They aren't actually talented at anything except selling themselves and a cursory examination of their "talents" will prove this.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[paintswithcolour]

Your example is interesting, but not really decisive. A counter-argument could be thus: Programming is a 'craft' like woodwork or building a house, now I could read books and spend years learning how to build a house and maybe I could put it into practice. I could learn from building that house and perhaps build a better house. But what I couldn't necessarily do is innovate a whole new and better way of living. Now it could be argued that people are born with is an innate creativity to approach the problem differently, an artist does not become brilliant through imitation but by innovation. That dosen't mean education isn't important but there's a spark to take that and run with it that dosen't exist for everyone.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[metlin]

Isn't the whole point of innovation to come up with some new idea.

Reminds me of a story. Someone once approached Frank Herbert and said that they had an idea, and if he would write a book, they'd share the profits with him.

He laughed at the person, because it is not the ideas that he was lacking in - it was the time and effort of executing those ideas that was hard.

Similarly, ideas are dime a dozen. Even *good* ideas are easy to find. Don't believe me? Just work on an area for a few months and you'll find yourself coming up with unique solutions and new ideas to solve existing problems that you (or people known to you) face.

On that note, cultures and environments that encourage innovation by letting folks come up with and work on new ideas will always succeed. I do not know about geniuses, but I have seen that even the most mediocre, average person can come up with fantastic ideas under the right circumstances and under the right environment (and the right tutelage).

There is nothing wrong in mimicking something else - if you can do something better than someone else can, then by all means go ahead. It is the end result that matters, not the uniqueness of the idea.

Ideas are worthless if you can't do something with them.

Re:Defeats/Prevents the purpose...

[drinkypoo]

There is another kind of Genius, the Genius of hard work. I mean this in the sense of the person, not the property of a person. Some people just seem to be inclined to work harder than others. Some people seem to be inclined to work even harder than them. If you're fairly intelligent, and you're motivated, and you're dedicated, you can accomplish a great deal more than most people ever will.

As anyone employed by a company can tell you

[w.p.richardson]

the best ideas come from senior managers. You just have to make them think they came up with it.

A really nice book on the evolution of our tech

[Churla]

I read this back in 86, a year after it was published in 85. Recently it was republished with a new afterword by the author. So now it's "retro history" but still great if you want to learn about the people behind a bunch of the technology :

http://www.amazon.com/Tools-Thought-History-Mind-E xpanding-Technology/dp/0262681153/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/ 002-1089548-0663244?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179948333 &sr=8-2

Sound's fab

[nagora]

It's witty and light. Which makes this a very fast read, one that leaves you wanting even more by the end

So basically it's like something someone told you quickly at the pub and you'll want to buy a decent book to find out anything substantial? Might give that a miss.

TWW

Ah, the Slashdot review

[popo]

Ah, the Slashdot review. Normally it is well written. The first sentence isn't misleading. The reviewer gets straight to the point. There is no confusing turnabout within the first paragraph. But this is not that review.

Re:Ah, the Slashdot review

[Anonymous Coward]

You're point is valid. Also, there are to many errors in grammar two be acceptable on Slashdot. The reviewer should study there English harder.

Re:They're all LONE innovators

[AKAImBatman]

The execution of an invention might be done in the group, but the innovation is ALWAYS A SINGLE IDEA IN A SINGLE PERSON

Yes and no. Innovative ideas tend to happen inside environments that are conductive to them. i.e. I may come up with a brilliant idea, but that's only after having bounced 50 related ideas off my coworkers. For some types of innovation, you may even need access to equipment and tools before you can develop the idea in the first place.

As for execution, is an idea really innovative if you can't execute it? The best someone can do in that situation is write a paper and hope someone else spends the resources. To effectively execute an idea, you pretty much always need infrastructure to support its development. The "lone innovator" tends to lack that infrastructure, and is thus usually unsuccessful in his attempts to execute.

Re:They're all LONE innovators

[AKAImBatman]

Execution isn't innovation, anymore than marketing is

See, I have to disagree. Take the Nintendo Wii as an example. Motion sensors exist in the PS3. They exist in Gameboy games. They exist in PC Joy[sticks|pads]. So why is the Wii so innovative?

The answer lies in its execution. It's a balls-to-the-wall embracing of an immature technology because someone, somewhere had the idea that the market was ready for it. Once the initial concept was sketched out, you can bet that dozens of ideas were tossed around to come up with the Wii Remote we see today. Some of it was driven by necessity (e.g. "We need to support classic games, so what if we made it an NES controller when turned sideways?") and some of it was probably driven by thoughts about how to utilize the ideas already developed. (e.g. "We added the IR to deal with the dead reckoning drift, but what if we also used it as a mouse cursor?") The resulting package is highly innovative, even if the individual ideas are not. (Or at least, "mildly" innovative.)

Innovation simply doesn't develop in a vacuum. :-)

Not enough monkeys

[sane?]

"Chapter five, "the lone innovator", debunks the legend of, well, the lone innovator. It sounds good, and plays into our noble story of the hero, but it's not common in reality."

In my experience each and every innovation can trace its roots back to one key insight in the mind of one person. The group can help, support, enhance and develop that insight, but without it and that key individual - there is nothing.

It doesn't matter how many monkeys you have, you're still not producing Shakespeare.

Re:Not enough monkeys

[radtea]

In my experience each and every innovation can trace its roots back to one key insight in the mind of one person.

This is either trivially true, inasmuch as every thought occurs first in an individual mind, and for a sufficiently small quantum of innovation it will be just one person who first has that insight and acts on it; or it is trivially false, because most of what is thought of as "innovation" is a collection of such individual insights.

In my experience as an innovator and inventor there are quite different kinds of innovation, which could be called "invention" and "aggregation." Invention means solving a novel, atomic problem. Aggregation means putting together the inventions of others into a new configuration. Both of these are equally important: without invention aggregators would have nothing to aggregate, and without aggregation far too many inventions would never have a very large impact on human capability.

Inventors are people like Newcomb and Watt, and perhaps the Wright brothers. Henry Ford was perhaps the world's greatest aggregator. Edison managed to do a bit of both.

Inventors tend to be excessively protective of their priority. Aggregators tend to be excessively lax in giving inventors credit (and payment.)

But again, both are required, and to disparage or ignore one of them is to miss an extremely important aspect of innovation.

What is this book about?

[DerekLyons]

The reviewer starts off talking about books on the history of technology - but the impression I took away from the review is that "Myths of Innovation" isn't a history book, but a self help/motivation book that uses historical anecdotes and case studies to support it's conclusions. A bit of apples and oranges really.

Re:They're all LONE innovators

[ranton]

So what do you consider to be an innovation?

Virtually all innovations are incremental improvements. Creating a new way for the internal combustion engine to work would be very innovative, but is just an incremental improvement on our current engines. A new drivetrain with less loss of horsepower from the cranshaft to the wheel would be a great innovation, but would still just be an incremental improvement on our current cars.

--

Evolution or Intelligent Design?

[jd]

That's what it comes down to. Do ideas evolve and become something new, over time, or are they something that spontaneously appear?

It's not about mimicking someone, but about preferring to stand on the shoulders of giants -- even if said giants are just other people standing on other shoulders. Innovation does involve something new being added. It is also not merely adding something for the sake of adding something - it can't be "Embrace and Extend". What was there before has to have a definite, identifiable, significant limitation or flaw and the new solution has to have a definite, identifiable, significant remedy that is genuinely unique and quite possibly inspired.

There is almost nothing in the world that didn't have a predecessor. Modern writing evolved from early phonetic syllaberies which evolved from symbols representing words/ideas which evolved from pictures representing entire scenes/concepts. Each stage came from something older, but each stage required a truly amazing intellectual leap.

Now, I personally draw a distinction between innovation and invention. To me, "invention" can only really refer to the first step in any such chain. All other steps are innovative, but they are not inventive. To me, an invention can have no true precursor. There may be something that an inventor uses as a source of inspiration, some personal Muse, but the source cannot be a true predecessor. The most it can be is inspiration.

Inventions, by my definition, are extremely rare, and are almost certainly invented by individuals. Innovations, by definition, are the work of not only the innovator(s) but all predecessors as well. As such, they are by definition not the work of individuals.

Also by my definition, inventors are very much a breed apart. The way most people think precludes them from ever inventing anything - they simply cannot imagine something from scratch, they can only imagine in derivative terms. Nothing wrong with that, and for most of life it is infinitely preferable. To think totally outside the box, totally in non-derivative terms, requires a brain that has some combination of higher-functioning autism, schizo-effective disorder and borderline personality disorder, and is yet functional enough in the real world to do anything meaningful.

Inventors are almost never successful, rarely have more than one true invention in their entire life, and historically have either descended further into madness, died young as a result of that illness, and/or died in abject poverty as a result of that illness. These days, you will most likely find true inventors living homeless on the streets, suffering from alcoholism and terrible ill-health. They will not be living in the condos of Silicon Valley, sipping champagne for breakfast. The reason there are more artistic inventors than technological inventors is that the homeless can usually scrounge chalk or paints far more easily than they can chip fabrication plants.

Countries that tend to provide better services for those who can barely function in life are frequently cited for having an extraordinary number of true inventors. This isn't because they really have more, it's because their inventors are more likely to live long enough and have the means to circulate their ideas. Countries known to provide only limited or non-existent help are known for their innovators (who are often world-class) but almost never for true invention. Generally, no country can afford to fund both inventors and innovators, and almost nobody tries.

Re:Evolution or Intelligent Design?

[Vincman]

Very well written, indeed!
Just to add to this, Schumpeter, the grandfather of innovation, distincts between innovation and invention as well. From the Capitalist Process (1939):

"The making of the invention and the carrying out of innovation are, economically and sociologically, two entirely different things. They may, and often have been, performed by the same person; but this is merely a chance coincidence which does not affect the validity of the distinction. Personal attitudes--primarily intellectual in the case of the inventor, primarily volitional in the case of the businessman who turns the invention into an innovation--and the methods by which the one and the other work, belong to different spheres".

In other words, the process of innovation is more the commercialisation of an invention, rather than the coming up with a scientific discovery.
I think it's interesting the way you see inventors as mostly inadequate for normal life. It makes them sound like artists, which in many ways they are.