Here’s my notes from the past week’s power outage experience:

• For all the fears and whining, I thought often, even when cold and tired, that this experience was a cakewalk as disasters go: 1.7 million without power for a few days is a trifle of suffering compared to any recent tsunami, hurricane, volcano, genocide or revolution. You can switch power back on. Frustrating yes. Devistating, no. It seemed Seattle lost sight of this: we’re babies. This was no New Orleans or Darfur.
• First two days were scary: no gas, no wood, no ice, no stores open. It’s unsettling when the magic trucks that bring sustenance stop coming: it’s a smack in the face reminding us how dependent on distant forces modern lives are. By Saturday stores opened (though wood and gas were gone) - Home Depot proved the best source of firewood, as even if out of bundles, you could buy 2×4s.
• KIRO 710 AM Radio was fantastic - They provided 24 hour coverage for 4 days straight, replacing talk radio with storm reports, live interviews with officials and powerco reps, and call ins with people giving tips and advice on where to find gas, wood, etc. It was an awesome resource, and they provided a great public service: heroes of the experience.
• The worst of people. KIRO reported every 10 minutes on the 100s of thousands of folks without power, but that didn’t stop angry callers from claiming how they had been abandoned - crisis makes some people very small and selfish: it was depressing to listen to - suffering doesn’t require having someone to blame.
• On the other hand, we met many generous neighbors who volunteered time to clear the 100ft tree from our driveway with gas chainsaws, and offer wood and gas.
• My sleep cycle improved. With no electric lights I easily woke at first light, and went to bed earlier than usual. Jill made the connection and it makes sense: all the computer and TVs screens are likely contributors to my periodic insomnia.
• I did not miss TV or e-mail. We charged cell phones in the car and that was as high tech as I got. Later on I’d try to write in coffee shops, but mostly failed.
• It took 2 days to work out the daily chores: starting the morning fire, making breakfast, dousing the fire, walking the dogs, negotiating who would be home by 4pm to start the fire up again (so the room would be warm by 7ish). Once we had the system it wasn’t that hard.
• There is an art to fireplace cooking: it’s harder than camping as there is a shallow roof over the fire, and we didn’t have grills for the fireplace. The secret is you can’t warm the room and cook: if you cook, you want even temp, if you want heat, you want big flames (I know - duh - but it took me 2 days to sort it out). We tried charcoal in the grill and it worked fine, but log ambers worked just as well. Like camping, lots of soups, chilis, and tin foil wrapped knishes made up many meals.
• Food was easier in the cold - first few nights were ~30 degrees, so we could keep food from the fridge on the deck. But it warmed up later and we had to trash much of the food. We tried to make ice one night (for the fridge & freezer), leaving out small water filled containers, but it didn’t quite get cold enough.

Lessons:

1. A pre-storm trip to the store would have done wonders. Refreshing batteries, wood, toping off gas tanks, etc. would have made this much less stressful.
2. Neighbors matter. Oddly we met more neighbors through this experience than in 7 years of living in this neighborhood (little else forces seattle-ites out of their homes). Pooling resources and skills makes life much easier in a near crisis (duh, but I’d forgotten).
3. Gadgets are over-rated. I knew this already but had it proven - all I needed was an AM radio, fire and some books and I was happy. With the extra work I needed less entertainment, not more, and was happy just to sit and listen or read.
4. I have no idea how power works. I spent more time staring at the various electronic bits hanging destroyed from trees and wondered what they all did. What does a transformer do exactly, and why are power lines above ground, not below? I have no clue. I’m trying to find a book on power grids and how they work, suggestions welcome.

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Power came on late yesterday. We called Puget Sound Energy, our power that morning are were told we wouldn’t have power until late Friday night - but Thursday, ~4pm, the answering machine picked up when I called and I raced on home.

Thanks to all who dropped kind and humorous notes of support or mild mockery - definitely helped get through this.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

I’m on day 8 without power - I’ve become a local geek refugee, fluttering from coffeeshop to coffeshop in search of quiet places to work.

I’ve discovered the neurotic edges of my writing habits: I can’t write a word if I people are talking nearby, fiddling with newspapers within eyeshot, or if there is bad music playing overhead - escpecially the sonic evil that is bad christmas music.

There is nothing festive about the relentless attack of dull, trite, treekly trash that passes for Christmas music in most stores and cafes. Who thinks this is fun? And do we really need to play it continually, on repeat, unless the goal is to get people to leave (or confess their sins). Can’t we mix it in? Like 1 holiday tune for 2 regular ones?

Or perhaps in the infinity of alternative and world music, there’s something more authentic than cheezy retreads of retreads of christmas standards?  (Why cover a song in exactly the same tempo, style and sound of the original? I’ll never know).

So dear readers: do you have alternative holiday tunes or playlist of actually good holiday music? Perhaps world music? Columbian quartets doing the twelve nights? Punk rockers doing silent night? Anyone have a creative playlist for this time of year? 

Help me out - you can save me and my book deadlines :)

Posted in humor, music | 23 Comments »

Today is the first I’ve had access to anything resembling wireless - Day 6 of the Worst windstorm in Seattle in a decade has been less than fun.

Was finally able to get gas (power has been out, meaning gas pumps don’t work) this morning, and the downtown of Redmond, my nearest town, is finally online. My current techno-salvation is Starbucks. Unlike my home on Union Hill, in the woods just past Redmond, where I still can’t see a single house with power.

For fun, here’ s a photo of what I found on my driveway Fri. morning:

If I was supposed to return a phone call / e-mail / or do something for you, but didn’t, now you know why :)

Jill, the dogs, and myself are doing ok - hopefully we’ll have power (and some normality) back soon. If nothing else, experiences like this sure hand you back some perspective on technology and innovation (ha ha!). More later.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

One great read from the innovation book research was Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet. Among other great histories inside is coverage of the early telegraph, which includes this bit of trivia. Early telegraphers had shorthand, much like today’s cell phone messages, to make best use of the characters sent.

Here’s some of the examples listed:

I I = I am ready
GA = Go Ahead
SFD = Stop for Dinner
GM = Good morning
1 = Wait a moment
2 = Get answer immediately

Despite all our bandwidth and fancy protocols, when it comes to efficiency, we’re right back in step with the 19th century.
Makes you wonder why we think of progress as a straight line when it so often seems more like a spiral.

Posted in Innovation | No Comments »

With the first draft done on the innovation book, it’s now time to enlist bright creative minds in helping the book be all it can be.

I’m forming a small, elite photography squad to help find fun, clever, amazing photos to appear in the book. Like my first book (collage below), I need strong images to complement the book’s ideas.

If you’re interested, leave a comment below, include a flickr link if you have one, or follow up directly and I’ll give you the details on how to contribute.

Be warned: I can only pay you in praise, admiration, and chocolate chip cookies.

Posted in Innovation, On writing | 8 Comments »

Side story: Before I left Microsoft I did a talk titled “How not to be stupid: a guide to critical thinking” and afterwards was was contacted by the director of the Microsoft company values team. This was an internal group I didn’t know existed that was dedicated to, you guessed it, promoting the company’s values (I’m not making this up).

He suggested the talk’s title went against the ideas listed on their internal site, and politely suggested I change the title to “How to be think better” or something less snarky to better reflect the values.

This exchange had the opposite effect: I felt one of the company values was free expression and voicing opinions, and thought immediately of doing the talk again, except with a nastier title, and twice the usual swearing. But perhaps this was just writing on the wall as I left the company a few months later: maybe the values, under my nose, had changed.

Which leads to this post: a conjecture about the value of executives as specialists of innovation.

Hypothesis: if ever a VP of something is created, say a VP of quality or a VP of sarcasm, it means two things:

1. The company is failing at that activity.
2. The company will continue to fail at that activity until that VP is no longer needed.

The first point is based on the fact that no innovative company in history, from amazon.com, to Google, to Apple, began with an innovation team. When companies start they are by definition creating new things and inventing ways to solve problems. Innovation in these early efforts isn’t prevented by the lack of a VP in charge of it. Finding new ideas happens simply because people need those new ideas to do their jobs. Just as there’s no VP of breathing, eating or e-mailing, people do these things just fine, as needed, to get through the day.

It’s only when a company has matured to the point where more people are employed to maintain the status quo than to pave new ground that new ideas face sufficient resistance, and the notion of a VP for innovation is even comprehensible. It’s no surprise that the only companies with VP roles focused on innovation are big ones. such as IBM, AMD, CitiGroup, or Proctor & Gamble (P&G).

Common titles include Chief Innovation officers, and VP of Innovation, but these roles rarely have product or even research management responsibilities: their roles are evangalistic. They’re not managing R&D groups, nor directing future thinking teams. Instead they’re supposed to encourage others in the company to be more innovative, by, well, asking nicely? Throwing innovation parties? I don’t really know (but it’s not clear they know either).

Much like my experience with the Microsoft values group, there’s an inevitable paradox in that evangelists can’t help but see themselves as experts in “corporate values” or “innovation” despite the fact it’s not what they’re doing everyday. And I suspect that any hard working product team who receives a phone call from a VP of Innovation, with notes on their project plan, will have a similar response to my interaction with Mr. Values: “Who are you to tell me what innovation is, or how to do it?” Unless the VP of Innovation has a stellar track record of innovating as a manager, or leading innovative projects, how can they possibly be credible to the rest of the company? And even if they’re credible, they can’t possibly have the authority over VPs who actually manage product development.

The only sensible angle for a VP of innovation to take is to dedicate themselves to eliminating the need for their role (Point #2 above). Any large company started somewhere, and started with innovation and new ideas. The VP’s goal then is recovery: to help teams rediscover the environments and attitudes they once had about new ideas, reintroducing risk taking and creative dialog, and then getting out of their way. Their job is to use their executive rank to promote teams that already have healthy systems of innovation in place, and use show others how to learn from them.

VPs of innovation should have expiration dates. When the company returns to a culture where innovation is natural, or at least comprehensible, the need for a VP of innovation has been satisfied and they should quit and end the role. If innovation doesn’t become a natural part of the environment by the expiration date, then that VP can’t say he’s succeeded, as his role in a truly innovative company, wouldn’t ever be necessary.

——————–

What do you think? This is a strawman, so lets see how well it stands up.

Posted in Innovation, Management | 17 Comments »

10 months down the road, the first draft is in the bag.

Although I’ve written nearly 40 posts about innovation here, I’ve kept quiet about book details for sanity reasons: I don’t know how to write the book, and write about writing the book, without frying my small brain.

So as thanks to all you who have helped out so far with comments and questions, here’s the inside scoop:

The Inside scoop on the innovation book

The book demystifies the history of great innovations. In over a year of research I’ve uncovered many popular beliefs about innovators, discoveries and inventions, that are dangerously inaccurate: trying to emulate these false ideas sets up todays innovators and big thinkers to fail: we’re chasing romance, not reality. For example:

• Newton did not discover gravity by watching apples.
• Gutenberg did not invent the printing press (Nor did Edison invent the light bulb).
• Eureka and breakthrough moments are overrated.
• Technological progress is not guaranteed (todays innovations are not necessarily better than those they replace).
• Good ideas rarely win on their merits alone.

The book attacks gaps between what we think we know, and what the truth is, about how innovations happen. It calls out these myths, through taunts, name calling and silly faces, showing the reader how to disarm and overcome them. And then the book goes after three things: 1) investigating why these misconceptions are popular, 2) using history to explain the truth and 3) provide lessons based on how innovations in business, technology and science really happen.

What’s next?

I’m deep in revision on draft 2: rereading, rewriting, and other writerly fun. A small cabal of reviewers have given feedback on draft one, and I’m using that to guide my way.

I’m currently searching for photos for the book - I need good sources of archival photos from the history of technology (although I’m open to other photo concepts for the book). If you have suggestions, or know a good book photo editor, contact me.

If draft 2 goes well, we may still be on track for a late Spring 2007 release. Stay tuned.

Questions? Suggestions? Or take the easy way out, and throw me some love on nailing draft numero uno! (Hint/plea: a simple “go Berkun!” goes a long way towards writing morale)

Posted in Innovation | 20 Comments »

To my delight, every now and then the fine folks at slashdot or lifehacker mention an essay of mine, and waves of people swing by, read something, and send feedback mail through the contact form.

I respond to as much of the interesting and thoughtful as I can - but it’s the internet, and some of it’s creepy, incomprehensible or just plain bizarre. I don’t fully know how to respond to many of these little notes I receive.
So for fun, here’s some highlights from the mailbag for the popular essay Why smart people defend bad ideas:

“You sir, are clearly a case of bad person defending a bad idea. You should practice what you preach before preaching to the choir.”

“THIS IS AMAZING. So MANY CLEVEr Things. SO NOW CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH MY PARENTS?”

“I liked the essay but smart people are just better, right? So why shouldn’t they just defend whatever they think is best?”

“…loved this. Really loved it. Made me want to get a shotgun and shoot all the asshats.”

“Hey. If you’re so smart why don’t you know that spark plugs can’t cause fires? eh? Tell me that tough guy. You suck rat ass. I want the 5 minutes it took to read your turd back.”

“I printed this in big font and slid it under the doors of the executive floor. But it had no effect. What do I do now you think? Bigger fonts?”

“Perhaps you can help with this. I’m dating two girls at the same time, and keep thinking I want one, but then the other… well I don’t know how to LOGICALLY choose. Write an essay on this! yes!”

“How much can I pay you to stand in my boss’s office with a megaphone and read this essay every time he opens his mouth?”

Posted in Essays, humor | 3 Comments »