[tt] Ten Myths of Innovation

[Hughes, James J.]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/10/the-14-myths-of.html

Ten Myths of Innovation

By Casey Kazan Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff on Innovation

"For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of
innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the
universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make
atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying
answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there
an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and
Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom
reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading,
fantasy-laden myths to grow strong."

Scott Berkun - bestselling author of The Myths of Innovation

   

In The Myths of Innovation (O'Reilly), Scott Berkun demystifies
innovation and illuminates why much of what we think we know about
innovation is not only false, but may actually stifle our creativity.

For years Berkun's job at Microsoft was to come up with good ideas for
making new things in Internet Explorer. He studied how the great
innovators achieved what they did and why certain things both worked and
failed. Along the way, he discovered amazing, mind-blowing facts from
history that he wished someone had told him long ago.

A few of these powerful sticky myths of innovation that rule our world
include Isaac Newton, who, for example, was never hit by an apple. The
Nobel Peace Prize is named after the man who invented dynamite, which
has been used in every war since its creation. Henry Ford was inspired
to make assembly lines by watching his butcher take animals apart. And
Google's page-rank idea was inspired by how academic papers list their
references.

    "Innovation is the current hype word," Berkun says in an interview
with Sara Peyton of O'Reilly Media. "The word has been trashed and
abused, used mostly as a placeholder for thinking, which is a shame.
Innovation is everywhere-the word was recently on the cover of
BusinessWeek magazine. Defending against innovation is at the heart of
the recent billion-dollar lawsuit Viacom filed against Google. Apple is
about to launch its iPhone, a product it claims revolutionizes how we
communicate. Making sense of these events and understanding why and how
they happen is at the heart of The Myths of Innovation. 

Berkun writes, "Discovering problems actually requires just as much
creativity as discovering solutions." Einstein once said, "If I had 20
days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it."

One of the reasons Edison became so famous is not that he "invented the
light bulb," but that he framed his problem much more broadly: "Make an
electricity system cities can use to adopt my lights."

Here are some key thoughts Berkun brings to life:

    1. "Despite the myths, innovations rarely involve someone working
alone, and never in history has an invention been made without reusing
ideas from the past. For all of our chronocentric glee, our newest ideas
have historic roots: the term network is 500 years old, webs were around
before the human race, and the algorithmic DNA is more elegant and
powerful than any programming language. Wise innovators--driven by
passion more than ego--initiate partnerships, collaborations, and humble
studies of the past, raising their odds against the timeless challenges
of innovation."

    2. "Apple, like Edison, earned well-deserved credit for vastly
improving existing ideas, refining them into excellent products, and
developing them into businesses, but Apple did not invent the graphical
user interface, the computer mouse, or the digital music player.
Similarly, Google did not invent the search engine, and Nintendo did not
invent the video game."

    3. "The most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional
bonus of working on tough problems. Most innovations come without
epiphanies, and when powerful moments do happen, little knowledge is
granted for how to find the next one. . .Nearly every major innovation
of the 20th century took place without claims of epiphany."

    4. "Study the history of any innovation--from catapults to
telegraphs to laser beams and nanotechnology--and you'll find its
invention and adoption is based on ordinary, selfish, and mostly
short-term motivations. Mistakes and complexities are everywhere,
rendering a straight line of progress as a kind of invention itself. .
.Every technology arrived in the same chaos that we witness in our
innovation today."

    5. "There is a huge gap between how an innovator sees the world and
how others see the world. Howard Aiken, a famous inventor, said, 'Don't
worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to
ram it down their throats.'"

    6. "The love of new ideas is a myth: we prefer ideas only after
others have tested them. We confuse truly new ideas with good ideas that
have already been proven, which just happen to be new to us. The paradox
is that the greater potential of an idea, the harder it is to find
anyone willing to try it."

    7. "While there a lot to be said for raising bars and pushing
envelopes, breakthroughs happen for societies when innovations diffuse,
not when they remain forever "ahead of their time."

    8. "The best lesson from the myths of Newton and Archimedes is to
work passionately but to take breaks. Sitting under trees and relaxing
in baths lets the mind wander and frees the subconscious to do work on
our behalf. Freeman Dyson, a world-class physicist and author, agrees,
"I think it's very important to be idle. . .people who keep themselves
busy all the time are generally not creative. So I'm not ashamed of
being idle. Some workaholic innovators tweak this by working on multiple
projects at the same time, effectively using work on one project as a
break from the other."

     9. "The myth that the best idea wins is dangerous. The goodness or
newness of an idea is only part of the system that determines if it will
win or lose."

    10. "The myth that leads to this idea-destroying behavior is that
good ideas will look the part when found. The future never enters the
present as a finished product, but that doesn't stop people from
expecting it to arrive that way."

Posted by Casey Kazan.

The Myths of Innovation Amazon

Story Links:

http://www.oreillynet.com/fyi/blog/2007/05/a_qa_with_scott_berkun_1.html
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/ten-questions-w.html