O’Reilly has posted a sample chapter from The Myths of Innovation book - Chapter 4: People like new ideas (PDF).

If you like that, you can get the rest here :)

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With thanks to everyone at the McLeod residence, the book release party went fabulously well. All the food was eaten, many free drinks were had, and I signed and sold dozens of books.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by or picked up a copy - appreciate the support.

Here are some fine photos by Neil Enns / Clearview photography.

More of Neil’s photos here.

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Ray Ortigas at MobiTV has stepped up and I’ve got one more stop on the tour. Here we go!

Mon May 14th

• 12:00 Adobe Inc., San Jose, CA
• 2:00pm Google, Inc.

Tuesday May 15th

• 12:00pm Adobe Inc., San Francisco, CA
• 2:00 pm, MobiTV, Emeryville, CA
• 5:00pm, Book Passage bookstore (public)

Wednesday May 16th

• 12:00pm Apple, Inc.
• 2:00pm Ebay, Inc.
• 7:00pm Adaptive Path, social + lecture (open to the public)

I’m booked solid for this tour, but if you want me to stop by next time, contact me.

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Last reminder for tonight’s shindig at the McLeod Residence in Seattle. There will be some free food, a supply of free drink tickets, all to celebrate the big pile of The myths of innovation book we’ll have for sale.

It’s still a week or more before these puppies will show up in your local bookstore. But of course amazon.com pre-orders are available now.

Time: 7:30pm, tonight, Thurs May 10th
Where: McLeod Resedence, 2209 2nd ave Seattle

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After 5 days in Moscow I can say this: it’s the most complex and fascinating trip I’ve had since my visit to India last year. Between handling the Cyrillic language, the juxtaposition of Soviet era architecture and lavish restaurants and bars, and the superficial coldness but deep hospitality and humor of the Russians we met, I’m still not sure to make of what I saw. A visit this short can’t possibly allow me to sort out a real opinion of a place this complex.

What i can say is this: all the folks at IT-Online, the hosts for my one day seminar, were wonderful. They helped me get around Moscow, lent me a cell-phone, and took care of all the translation services needed for the actual event (Being translated in real-time was wild). We had about 150 people in house, interviews with local press, and IT-Online did everything to set me up for a great event. Thanks to Daniel Downs, Dmitri Satin, Dmitri Volkov, Olga Postoyanova, Irina Matvienko and everyone else at IT-Online that was so kind and helpful during my visit.

And of course: the audience! Some of the questions were fantastic, despite the language barrier. And during breaks I had great chats with dozens of folks about software, writing books, managing people and drinking Vodka! :)

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One observation from studying innovation is the underuse of the other i-word: imagination. It’s a word for creativity that’s associated positively with children: “Jimmy’s so imaginative with his stuffed animals.” but negatively with professional adults “My CEO is so imaginative with his annual profit report”. You rarely hear managers, doctors, or politicians praised for their imagination - it’d be a veiled insult if, when asked, the i-word was the first adjective used to describe most professionals. If I told you “He’s an imaginative heart surgeon”, I doubt he’d be first in mind while in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

The word imagination suggests daydreams and doodles - the ability to invent worlds and wild concepts. But since these talents rarely maps directly to business plans, org charts and customer satisfaction reports, the word isn’t used often in most places of work.

What’s curious then is the popularity of the word vision. Somehow this word, tied to shamans and hallucinogenic drugs, made its way to the center of the suit and tie workplace. People talk of vision documents and vision setting in the same conversations as status reviews and performance audits. Knowing something of vision quests and pagan vision rituals, a part of me both laughs and cries every time I see a businessman, wound repressively into a creativity-resistant suit and tie environment, uses that word.

That tragedy is how we forget that a vision is the product of someone’s imagination. Someone makes it up, writes it down, and only then does it become something that other people can follow. Even people who earn the label “visionary” or “genius” use their imagination, doodles, crazy ideas and all, to create their visions. Yet somehow despite people’s interest in visions, they’re unlikely to encourage the create force, in the form of people’s imagination, required to create them.

Creative relationships and teams are easy to spot: just look for people equally savvy in sharing their imagination as they are their logic.

“Imagination is one of the vaguest words in the language, embracing everything from vain fancy to magisterial achievement. Using this word has the effect of boxing the mind into opposed categories (reason/imagination) that falsify the much more interesting processes of creative thought. Appealing to the imagination of ones children, students or office staff thus tends to polarize their self awareness in a rather unproductive way. ”

- Robert Grudin, The Grace of great things.

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The fine folks at Amazon.com have posted a video excerpt from a recent talk I did at their headquarters - I cover topics from the book including the Archimedies bathtub myth (Where the saying “Eurkea!” comes from), innovation diffusion theory and much more.

Low Bandwidth / High Bandwidth

You can pre-order the book, or read early reviews, now on amazon.com.

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When a book is first off the presses it’s time for celebration - So to kick off the the release of my new book is this little shindig.

The great folks at the McLoud residence (an art gallery and much much more) are letting me use part of their space, and you’re invited.

Where: McLeod residence, 2209 2nd ave Seattle
When: Thursday May 10th, 7:30pm
What: Food, drinks, and books for sale (cash/check only)
Cost: Free and open to the public
Why: First chance anywhere in the world to see and buy the new book, have a drink, eat some free food, and say Hi.

More details here.

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