It’s only been a few days but I’ve been blown away by Moscow - Yes, I did see much of what I expected. The architecture is overpowering, the history is awesome, and the sense of being somewhere that only a few years ago would be nearly impossible never quite fades.

But what I can’t get over is how much I’ve seen that i did not imagine: lavish, decadent bars that rival those in any world city. The fact that you can hire ordinary drivers as taxis and just put out your arm and hop in cars to find your way. To see people walk around with open containers of beer, something verbotten in the states (apparently it’s illegal here too but tolerated).

There is so much going on here that I’ve never heard about - and as I sort it out I’ll be writing more.

Here’s a photo from St. Basil’s cathedral near the Kremlin.

Posted in On Tour, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Myths of Innovation book tour will hit Vancouver BC next month, thanks to the Vancouver user experience group. Here’s the details:

What: Talk on the myths of innovation
When: Thurs may 24th, 5:30-7pm
Where: Vancouver Film School

Full Details - rsvp required (venue will likely sell out)

Posted in On Tour | 2 Comments »

The book has been sent to press - it’s all done! here are some details:

Book description: In The Myths of Innovation, bestselling author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at innovation history, including the software and Internet Age, to reveal how ideas truly become successful innovations-truths that people can apply to today’s challenges. Using dozens of examples from the history of technology, business, and the arts, you’ll learn how to convert the knowledge you have into ideas that can change the world.

Pre-orders available now. Book will be in stores first week in May.

And some early praise:

“Insightful, inspiring, evocative, and just plain fun to read it’s totally great.”
– John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox, and Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC); current Chief of Confusion

“Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation.”
– Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University; author of Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things

“The naked truth about innovation is ugly, funny, and eye-opening, but it sure isn’t what most of us have come to believe. With this book, Berkun sets us free to try to change the world unencumbered with misconceptions about how innovation happens.”
– Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

“Brimming with insights and historical examples, Berkun’s book not only debunks widely held myths about innovation but also points the ways toward making your new ideas stick. Even in today’s ultra-busy commercial world, reading this book will be time well spent.”
– Tom Kelley, GM, IDEO; author of The Ten Faces of Innovation

“This book cuts through the hype, analyzes what is essential, and more importantly, what is not. You will leave with a thorough understanding of what really drives innovation.”
– Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com

“I loved this book. It’s an easy-to-read playbook for anyone wanting to lead and manage positive change in their business.”
– Frank McDermott, Marketing Manager, EMI Music

And if that’s not enough, here’s the table of Contents.

Pre-orders on amazon available now. More info and teasers to come.

Posted in Innovation, books | 6 Comments »

The myths of innovation book is coming - a mere 4 weeks away - and I’ll be writing appetizers like this one until it’s out to tease, titillate and tempt you.

One great misnomer about innovation is that big organizations can’t do it. It’s a shame really, as there are many stories of great innovations done by big companies. We love the start-up stories, but there are many great invention tales connected to big, old, organizations.

In fact many of the greatest technological innovations of all time, landing on the moon (NASA), the creation of the first PC (Xerox), and the development of the Internet (DARPA) all took place inside of large organizations. Then of course there is the ENIAC (first PC), the first jet engines (RLM), and countless other inventions created by various large organizations throughout history.

Now I’m not saying innovation is easier in large companies (although occasionally it is) - I am saying that the size of an organization is rarely a deciding factor: it’s the organization’s attitude towards change that matters.

Here’s an example: If the CEO of SuperBig Inc. decides to pay $1mil to any employee who prototypes new product ideas, guess what he’ll have? Lots of hard working people willing to take risks with new ideas.

And by the same token, if the CEO of UltraLeanStartupCo Inc. yells at people for taking chances, and pays bonuses exclusively for complacent status-quo behavior, he’ll never see innovation no matter who he hires, or what books he reads.

Certainly SuperBig’s stockholders might wonder about their CEO’s sanity, but we’re talking innovation, not mental health.

One hypothesis is that innovation hinges on two things:

1. Willingness to take risks
2. Commitment to hard work

And both are hard to achieve in any sized organization. Talent, resources, and luck are irrelevant if no one is taking chances (#1) and working hard to make them pay off (#2). I certainly like talent and luck, but innovation can happen without them.

Sure, there are a thousand caveats - I concede that risk aversion is rampant in many big organizations - but the point generally stands: size is not a primary factor in the ability to find/follow new ideas - it’s the strategy and behavior of the leaders that matters much more. There are enough examples of innovations by big organizations to render size a less important variable than is commonly believed.

So instead of lamenting “my company is so big it never innovates” - a more accurate complaint is “my boss’s strategy doesn’t reward people with new ideas”.

Posted in Innovation | 7 Comments »

For ages I’ve been working on merging the site with the blog - since the site was ancient, evil, hacky HTML code, and my programming skills are long since forgotten, I needed help.

Jennifer Zelazny at Sandbox development helped me out. With her hard work the site is now, except for the (evil) phpbb forums, running 100% wordpress.

There are various UI bugs and nits I’ll be cleaning up over the next two weeks - so stay tuned. If you have any gripes, here’s the place to list ‘em.

Posted in Design | 2 Comments »

The publishing and software worlds have much in common - nothing like a conference to get things in gear. Recently at e-tech I saw a press only copy of my book at the O’Reilly table.

There was also a flyer for the book and as soon as it’s available online I’ll post a link.

We’re really close - Book should be in stores first week in May. And tour dates for May are lining up now.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

Last month my e-tech talk was right after Peter Biddle and Cory Doctorow’s session. The schedule gave me 10 minutes to set up so I got up there as soon as they finished. This is always a perfect storm, as there are often people waiting to chat with the previous speaker, the speaker him/herself loving their moments of glory, while I’m trying to get my slides going and make sure nothing has exploded. They all want nothing more than to stay, and I want nothing more than for them to leave. (This drama is repeated hourly at every conference everywhere).

I hop on stage but hang back, trying not to be rude - first thing Cory says to me is “Sorry for running late.” I check the time - they finished a minute early.

Sure, in the grand scheme it’s trivia - but anyone gracious enough to worry about me while stepping down from the podium, on time, deserves kudos. Being nice when everyone is watching is one thing, but when there’s no one around is something else entirely.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Seattle ignite is a fun tech-sector event run by Brady Forest from O’Reilly, and tommorow’s 3rd session looks to be the best one yet.

Starting at 6:30pm there’s a paper airplane making contest (open to all) hosted by Bre from Make, followed by 5 minute presentations starting at 8:30pm - I’ll be doing one about attention and sex and the lineup of other talks looks great, from airplane engine design to Naturopathics to life in prison.

Hope to see you there - details and location.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

scottberkun.com & scottberkun.com/blog are undergoing some changes over the next day - so if things are weird or pages 404, you know why.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The theme at etech was technology as magic, and many sessions took it head on. Seth Raphael’s talk on Sufficiently advanced magic was my favorite session with the word magic in the title. He mixed up magic performance, entertainment and techno-philosophy and lived up to the conference theme.

Danah Boyd and Jane McGonigal asked the deepest questions at the conference, exploring the impact of technology on people but from two different perspectives (Danah explored the impact of social networking on people, especially less-technical people, and Jane challenged the audience to take responsibility for the things we make actually making people happier). I was happy these excellent sessions were about the impact of technology, rather than about technology itself (which often bores me to tears).

But some sessions went meta on the magic theme - They tried so hard to explain magic, offer philisophies on magic, or deconstruct how technology approximates magic, that there wasn’t much air left in the room - the sessions were decidedly unmagical and abstractly academic. I thought Seth did it right, but given how many smart people struggled to handle the topic he made it look easier than it was. David Brunton had it right in his talk on cellular automata, but the audience seemed stunned by what I thought was a very funny presentation.

And along the way, for some reason, the idea of UI metaphors got roughed up - in 3 of the sessions i saw they picked on the idea of metaphors - and I’ll offer a defense in a future blog post (hint: web pages, links and buttons are all metaphors).

Best demo: Paul and Lelia at Idee gave the best demo I saw: their image searching tool blew my mind. Otherwise I didn’t see much that stuck with me - there was commentary about emerging things, and talks on why X or Y should or shouldn’t emerge, but not that much in the memorable demo department. MSR had some great demos, including the children’s programming tool Boku (video) and a mobile web browser that doesn’t suck (no easy task).

I did a tutorial on How to innovate on time (Slides 4mb ppt) and a short talk on the myths of innovation - both were fun and had good crowds. Tom Coates was both bold and generous enough to correct my erroneous story of the origins of the word architect, but otherwise my tales of innovations past were well received.

Thanks to anyone who saw me speak and to Rael, Vee and the O’Reilly folks for having me there.

You can find Slides from other speakers can be found here plus coverage and photos.

Posted in Innovation, On Tour | 5 Comments »