You know a big word is in trouble when it’s used repeatedly (inconcievable!) - it means the person saying it doesn’t know what it means or isn’t saying anything at all.

In a recent Ford TV ad, the word innovation is used once every 8 seconds, a sure sign that the i-word has seen better days.

Today the word innovation is a common placeholder - Instead of saying “we are smart”, “we are good” or “we are willing to try new ideas”, messages that can be examined for truth, the word innovation is thrown down ambiguously, as if it were a replacement for having a message, or stating one clearly.

The goal of my upcoming book, The myths of innovation (Out May 1st 2007), is to bring honor back to the word by exploring the history of true innovations, and demystifying the breakthroughs of the past and the present.

Along the way I’ve learned some easy ways to diminish innovation hype:

1. Challenge the word. Never allow the word to be used in conversation without asking “what do you mean by innovation?”. If it’s not clear to you as a listener how the word is being used, the speaker probably doesn’t know either: call them on it.
2. Pick your meaning. Innovation is frequently used to mean one of: something new, something better, something new and better, or something that will win. If that’s what you mean, say that instead. If you’re not sure what you mean, say that, or just keep quiet.
3. Avoid compound usage. As soon as you’re throwing hyphens around you know you’re in trouble. Innovation is a strong enough word to stand alone. Replace incremental Innovation, with improvement. Disruptive innovation with big change. Never have a slide or diagram that depends on multiple uses, with different meanings, of the same word (tip: you can use the words incremental and disruptive on their own - they’re grown up words too).
4. Remember Edison. Most great innovations took place before there were business books on the subject. Edison didn’t need an innovation pipeline or an innovation infrastructure to invent the phonograph or perfect electric lights, and you don’t either. Somehow Da-Vinci, Tesla, and Picasso innovated without using the word: you and your company can too. Edison laughed at the hype-mongers, cursing rule makers and secret seekers, preferring to work hard at creating things rather than just talking about it.
5. Competence trumps innovation. If you suck at what you do, being innovative will not help you. I don’t care how innovative Burger King might be, their food sucks. Business is driven by providing value to customers and often that can be done without innovation: make a good and needed thing, sell it at a good price, and advertise with confidence. If you can do those 3 things consistently you’ll beat most of your competitors, since they are hard to do: many industries have market leaders that fail this criteria. If you need innovations to achieve those 3 things, great, have at it. If not, your lack of innovation isn’t your biggest problem.
6. Call bullshit. Asking for examples kills hype dead. Just say “can you show me your latest innovation?” Most people that use the word don’t have examples - they don’t know what they’re saying and that’s why they’re addicted to the i-word. Keep pressing and most hype-philes concede what they’re doing isn’t new. The fastest way to detect BS is to look at facts and at the present. True innovators rarely need the word: they just show their work.

Posted in Innovation, Management | 10 Comments »

I had a blast speaking at Adaptive Path’s MX conference recently about the Myths of Innovation book. I had the closing slot which can be tough, but the crowd was great and gave me a chance to have some fun (podcast of this talk is coming)

One highlight was being interviewed by Sarah Nelson, a design strategist for AP.

To give a taste, and stumble into the postmodern idiocy of quoting someone quoting me:

SN: One of the things I’ve been wondering about is the idea of “source of innovation” within a company. Do you think it’s actually possible to create an environment in which innovation occurs?

SB: I think that you can create an environment, and it’s very simple… whoever has power over a budget, and whoever has power over what features are included in a product or go up on the website, they enable innovation by saying “yes.” That’s really the fundamental thing that they have to be willing to do.

When someone shows up with an idea — “Hey, why don’t we change the navigation system from this older design to this new design I’ve been thinking of? Can I get some money to go and prototype this?”

All that has to happen is the person with power says, “Yes, I will give you a week to go and prototype that and we will review it when you have the prototype, and then we’ll consider actually making those changes.” And once everyone witnesses the person in power saying “yes” to a new idea, then they’ll be comfortable bringing another idea, or a third idea. And then all of a sudden, you have an environment that is very receptive to new ideas and innovations.

Sounds obvious, but as I explain in the book these environments are rare.

Link to the full expletive free interview.

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In the parade of mis-represented research that is modern journalism, we have this short article from MSNBC, titled “Do meetings make us dumber?“.

The article starts with:

People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests.

Which people are these exactly? Articles, and research, treat people as uniform, while we all know the goodness or badness of meetings depends on who is there. If you had a conference call with Bono, Einstein, Dostoevsky, and Susan Sontag, I guarantee the meeting wouldn’t make you dumber.

While folks of their caliber aren’t clambering to join our meetings, it does stand that who controls the invite list holds the fate of the meeting in their hands.

And doesn’t the goal of a meeting impact the quality of what happens? As the articles states:

Scientists exposed study participants to one brand of soft drink then asked them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

Wow. I can’t think of a task more inspiring for creative thinking than listing brands of soda, can you? Isn’t that what Mozart, Walt Whitman and the Beatles did?

How can anyone think this is representative of what goes in in “creative” meetings, or is a viable, as science, to use in comparison to how people make decisions, or work in groups, in real life?

Two points of refutation:

1. The value of meetings hinges on who is running the thing. A good facilitator can convert most meeting horror shows into productive and near-fun experiences if given the power to do their thing.
2. There are well known techniques for creative thinking and tactics any meeting leader can use to minimize the negative effects of groups, while amplifying the positive ones. Good facilitators know these things.

The notion of group behavior harming creative thinking has a long history - the term groupthink coined in 1972, and it offers a more useful analysis that the MSNBC or the research study.

For reference:

- How to run a brainstorming meeting

(Link from Flee)

Posted in Innovation, Management | 12 Comments »

As proofreading goes on chapter by chapter, I get my last chance to review references and properly site cite sources. It’s slow, tedious, and so little fun, I thought I’d throw some of it at you.

The question: How many species in the history of the planet have gone extinct?

The web has been surprisingly stingy. The wikipedia entry for extinction pointed me back at mediocre sources I already had.

Obviously I don’t need hard data as there isn’t much: but a ripe quote from an expert, or a summary of expert opinions would be perfect.

The prize: find me a reference that I’m willing to use in the book, and I’ll put your name in the book’s acknowledgments.

Posted in On writing | 11 Comments »

What was it like when the world upgraded from sheets of paper to books? Well here’s one humorous version of what that must have been like.

(Link from author Douglas Smith )

btw: I’m looking to compile some innovation humor. If this made you think of other skits, cartoons or jokes, please leave a comment.

Posted in Innovation, humor | 8 Comments »

The best new tech sector event in Seattle is the Ignite series Brady Forest started a few months ago. It’s an open submission series of 5 minute talks, and it’s fun. The fact that it takes place in a bar on capital hill doesn’t hurt, and if you can get there early you can take part in a fun Make magazine competition (think flying eggs) run by Bre Petis.

Details, directions and agenda here.  Unless you have plans, go.

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Months ago I described my experiences with book sales called the life of a book. Almost a year has gone by since then: time for an update for those curious about what it’s like on this side of the book.

Here are 12 months of amazon rankings for artofpm (courtesy of rankforest):

The bad news:

• Essays proved to be good traffic and sales spikes, but I’ve only written 3 essays since last April. My goal is one a month, so I’m in essay debt. Book writing drains my interest in longer pieces - I can do the blog thing w/a book in progress, but essays are harder to motivate.
• I’ve struggled to balance book writing, blog posting, and essay writing. If you have any self-discipline pills, please send.

The good news:

• Blog traffic has been on a steady climb. But correlation to sales data is harder to prove.
• Amazon sales spiked for 6 weeks, from 12/15-1/30.
• Artofpm returned to O’Reilly’s best seller list two weeks ago at #21, which is unusual for a book two years old.

Analysis:

• The sales spike is hard to explain: project management seems an unlikely holiday gift. (Here honey -Have fun!)
• My consulting and public speaking activities have been steady: I can’t correlate sales with those activities.
• The spike lasted about 6 weeks, but now has trailed off, with amazon rankings around 7000.

What does all this mean? I don’t know. I though writing this post would help sort it all out: but there’s no easy explanation.

Thanks are due to anyone out there who has recommended the book to others. At this point the book is on its own, and its continued success comes from people telling others about it: so thank you.

The continued sales makes it easier for me to write more online, and defend the time for more books. I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated the support. Hope y’all like the myths of innovation book when it’s out: I think you will :)

If you have questions about life on this end of the book, fire away.

Posted in On writing | 7 Comments »

If you’ve been reading here for awhile you know I have some questions about innovation history. Well the book I’ve been working on for the last two years has some answers.

The book is called The myths of innovation and it has 3 goals:

1) Identify the myths we have about new ideas and innovation
2) Explore why they’re popular and how they came to be
3) Use lessons from history to replace myths with knowledge

I’m taking big swings in this book: I take on meaty concepts like creativity, revolution, history and progress, telling great stories from innovations past, while delivering advice at a fast pace. It’s a shorter book than artofpm but the challenge to readers, and the value, is much greater. (But what do I know - I’m just the writer).

Over the next few weeks leading up to the book’s April release (date tba) I’ll dig in on some of these themes, shed light on the myths, and give you a preview of what’s to come. A book tour like last time (west coast and east) is in the works, and I’ll post more details as I have them.

Thanks to all of you who have commented here along the way: Its made a difference and I’m grateful.

Posted in On writing | 10 Comments »

One of the little details authors fret about is footnotes vs. endnotes. It’s a style choice: should you keep a slot at the bottom of every page for notes, or collect them all at the end of the book (or chapter)? A quick survey of 10 books from the library shows:

Endnotes: 4
Footnotes: 4
No notes(!): 2

Sure, its fair to say who cares - it’s what’s in the notes that matters more than where they are, but still. Don’t you have an opinion? Many folks do and get quite passionate about it. Best I can tell, here are the main arguments:

Footnotes. The pros: You can quickly check the note without leaving the page, and the author can stuff funny things in there. The cons: its distracting if there are lots of notes and its visually ugly.

End-notes: The pros: Saves any research probing to the end and keeps pages clean. Cons: the footnotes are rarely read and if they are, its hard to know what the hell the author is referring to, and you have to jump back and guess where the note came from.

I ask because my book is at that stage. If you have any bright ideas, or entertaining rants, I’d love to hear them now.

Posted in On writing | 37 Comments »

Founders at work is a collection of interviews with, surprise, founders of tech-sector companies. The goal is to capture their recollections of the early days of their successful ventures, and share stories that were often overlooked.

The interview list is first rate: founders from Hotmail, Adobe, Excite, Firefox, Yahoo! and more than 20 other well known companies are included.

The upside is that these stories read honest: there’s struggle, failure, fear, mis-steps and changes of direction, all the things often glossed over by high level mainstream interviews of success stories. If you’ve wished you could have a chat with some of these folks, you’ll be happy with this book. Livingston does a good job of staying out of the way and tries to cover similar territory with each interview (however it has the minor effect of making the book more readable in separate sitings, as the repetition of questions tires after 5 interviews in a row).

The other risk for those with dreams of entrepreneurship is that the stories come across as ordinary: there are few magic moments, radical breakthroughs, or amazing coincidences: its mostly hard work, and fantasies of what starting a company is like will fade by the 8th interview.

This book is inspiring at times: mostly because it makes the stories of these startups real. These were human beings doing these things, not omnipotent geniuses. Anyone expecting triumphant, and replicable, vision for why these folks succeed will be forced to look elsewhere, or perhaps more to the value of this book, reconsider what it takes to found a successful company.

Founders at work at Amazon.com.

The author, Jessica Livingston, is a partner at Y Combinator, a venture firm for early startups with some novel ideas on what venture firms should do.

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I recently met Jonah Burke, one of the directors of the darfur foundation, to chat about innovation. I came across his project, darfurwall.org, at Ignite Seattle, a local tech-sector meetup.

Months ago I wrote a preechy essay about difference making: well, here’s an example of someone doing the real thing.

Not only is darfurwall.org a clever piece of design and engineering, it serves a purpose: all the money people chip in for lighting up the digital wall goes straight to helping people in need. Like a physical monument, it gives a sense of both the impact of what has happened, but also offers a way to participate. Check it out.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Disclaimer: I met Bill Moggridge (the author) when he volunteered as a judge, with Brenda Laurel, and Andrew Dillon, in the CHI.

Designing Interactions is a book of stories. It takes the novel view that the people behind the designs can teach us more about design than the designs themselves. Although there are plenty of ID-magazine style photographs, they’re not the centerpiece: the people and their design stories are.

If you’re fond of interviews, and want to hear first person stories about how various famous designs were made, this book is for you. I’m a story guy so I was happy, finishing most of the book in one sitting (More theory-driven readers would be happier elsewhere).

The book’s content is well described on the companion website, including a chapter overview exposing an emphasis for tech-design history: From the mouse, to the PC, to PalmPilot, Moggridge starts at the beginning and works his way, one person at a time, to the Internet, gaming and the future. While there is some predictable designer-self worship, and a shortage of stories of failure, many of the stories are humbling, refreshing and inspiring.

One warning is that the book has a San Francisco & IDEO centricity: more a reflection of the author’s network than an objective history of tech-design. IDEO, which Moggridge co-founded, is mentioned often and if this annoys you either filter it out or look elsewhere.

The book is a bargain, coming in at a hefty 800 pages, many amazing color photos (including archival), and a companion DVD (although it overlaps with the published interviews). I can’t think of another book like it.

Interview list includes: Bill Atkinson • Sergey Brin • Stu Card • Gillian Crampton Smith • Jane Fulton Suri • Bill Gaver • Bing Gordon • Rob Haitani • Jeff Hawkins • Matt Hunter • David Kelley • Brenda Laurel • David Liddle • John Maeda • Tim Mott • Joy Mountford • Takeshi Natsuno • Larry Page • Mark Podlaseck • Larry Tesler • Bill Verplank • Terry Winograd • Will Wright

Sample chapter and interviews. Buy from Amazon.

Posted in Book reviews, Design | No Comments »