Here is an excellent book. The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun, was first published by O’Reilly in 2007. The recent 2010 version has four new chapters and revisions through out. I was pleased to receive a review copy recently. In this volume Scott Berkun takes a “careful look at the history of innovation to reveal powerful truths about how ideas become successful innovations -- truths that people can apply to their challenges today.”
The book begins with the myth of epiphany and the perspective that ideas never stand alone. It has long been held that innovation is generally a collaborative experience and that has been my observation so I am already aligned with the premise of this first chapter. It is also the premise of crowd-sourcing. Scott notes that we often see ideas as existing independently from our selves and we have to find them. This concept is traced to the early Greeks but it does a disservice today where modern psychology sees a closer connection between the thinker and the thoughts and, at the same time, the strong impact of the social context on our thoughts.
The seemingly moment of eureka when the final piece of the puzzle falls into place does not do service to the long process of putting together the foundation for this final effort. Scott refers to the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihaliy on creativity. I have long respected his work and did a review of it in the early 80s. Mihaly studied the thoughts of highly creative people He wrote, as Scott quotes, “Cognitive accounts of what happens during incubation assume… that some kind of information processing keeps going on when we are not aware of it, even while we are asleep.” I find this to be so true and often will take a nap to get a breakthrough idea for a presentation or an article. The lesson is to work hard but take time for reflection. This works for group research as well. People are starting to get this. Even Agile development builds in reflection points.
This is just the starting point. Berkun explores other myths around innovation such as: the best ideas always win, good ideas are hard to find, and people love new ideas. Just ask Copernicus, Darwin, and many of the others who had breakthrough ideas about the last one.
There are four new chapters that address what you might do after coming with an innovative idea. They include how to move forward with an idea, how to pitch an idea and how to stay motivated. The book concludes with a useful annotated bibliography. There are a lot of examples throughout and in many ways it is a history book and I find this approach interesting. The author points out that most great innovators did not start out by reading a book on innovation. I think they would have liked this one.
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