'Innovation In a Flash' Is a Myth

An anonymous reader writes "A New York Times article spells out what most of us probably already knew: real innovation takes lots of time and hard work to come to fruition. The article looks at the origins of new ideas, and attempts to dispel the myth that 'Eureka' moments create change. Comments author Scott Berkun, 'To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point. The goal isn't the magic moment: it's the end result of a useful innovation. Everything results from accretion. I didn't invent the English language. I have to use a language that someone else created in order to talk to you. So the process by which something is created is always incremental. It always involves using stuff that other people have made.'"

Comments

Re:And that my friends...

[mpe]

I think you've got it completely backwards. Open Source is *not* about innovation, it's about building solid products. In general, the only thing truly innovative about Open Source software is the Open Source model itself.

Which isn't actually that innovative in the first place.

1% Inspiration, 99% Perspiration; Rinse Lather Rpt

[Doc Ruby]

When Thomas Edison said that "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration", he was one to know, since he had hundreds of other people on staff helping thinking up inventions and doing practically all the sweatwork to make a patentable version.

And even there he left out the bankers and lawyers geniuses require to protect every innovation from further innovation that could threaten some of the profits.

That whole ingenious system took years to hammer out and perfect.

If only he'd patented it, others couldn't have just copied his way of extracting every possible penny from any possible invention. Instead of just getting the biz model in a flash, they'd have had to maintain a stable of pros to come up with it for them.