I’m speaking on innovation at the upcoming adaptive path conference MX-EAST, on October 21-23 near Philadelphia, PA. It’s a small, single track conference for people who lead designers or work at intersection of business and design. Here’s a summary:

As the business value of design becomes clearer, creative managers building the next generation of products and services are confronted with an increasingly demanding set of challenges. MX East brings thought leaders from IDEO, Google, The New York Times, The Mayo Clinic, and many others, to show you what it takes to get great experiences out into the world.

As an experiment, I’ve been given my own personal promotion code (MXSB). If you use it when you register you’ll get the following bonuses:

• 15% off the registration price, including lodging (~$250 value).
• Personal gift - I will either: buy you dinner at the event, send you a signed copy of one of my books, or write a blog post on the topic of your choice.

Other speakers include Irene Au, Director of UX for Google, Khoi Vinh, Design Director for the New York Times, Mark Jones, Director at IDEO, and more.

Interested? Take this link to see the agenda and details.

Posted in Design | 1 Comment »

Someone yelled at me on e-mail that i have a curiously sweet technorati ranking, but that i don’t link out to very many websites, which he didn’t think was very nice. I recently discovered a sports website called truehoop, that does link roundups in a way that doesn’t suck, so I’ll give it a spin. Here’s hoping links from me aren’t the kiss of traffic death.

• Love for IE4. One of the developers of Firefox, Joe Hewitt, has this nice post about the role Internet Explorer 4.0 played in innovation and how the i-phone deserves a positive comparison to it, in response to Wired’s critical comparison.
• Google launches video ads in Google. This report suggests that Google will have semi-transparent ads that appear at the bottom of you-tube videos. I think we all knew this was coming.
• Steve McConnell has a software development blog. I guess I’m finally out from under my rock, McConnell, one of the greatest writers on software development, has been writing a blog since March.
• Edward De Bono, author of many good books on creative thinking, has this short gem about the conflict between logical thinking organizations and creativity.
• Fun design blog round-up. I haven’t been writing much about design these days, but I still read. Core77 is a favorite, with short punchy design news and commentary. If you want to feel better about your own team’s design incompetence, flip through Mark Hurst’s this is broken (the great archive is there, but the blog has moved here).

Posted in linkfest | 6 Comments »

“It often happens, with regard to new inventions, that one part of the general public finds them useless and another part considers them to be impossible.

When it becomes clear that the possibility and the usefulness can no longer be denied, most agree that the whole thing was fairly easy to discover and that they knew [it] was significant.”

- Abraham Niclas Clewberg-Edelcrantz, an inventor of the optical telegraph

Despite how simple this observation is, it’s clear to me that anyone who wants to innovate needs to understand this pattern and expect to confront it again and again in their work.

Chapters 2 (on history of innovation) and Chapters 4 (on the human nature of change) from The Myths of Innovation summarize the research I found on both understanding and overcoming the pattern.

A free version of chapter 4 can be found here (3MB PDF).

Posted in Innovation | 3 Comments »

Writing books is hard enough, but selling them is an entirely different challenge. While I’ve learned much, I’m no expert. What follows are my experiences which hopefully will interest those who know less and simultaneously attract the opinions of those who know more.

With that in mind, here’s part 3 of a series I’ve been doing on the sales life of my books (part 1 and part 2, were about my first book). It’s almost three months into sales for my 2nd book and that’s focus of this post.

Sales summary

Through use of the ever-handy rankforest.com, here are the first three months of sales rankings on Amazon.com for my latest book. Of course amazon.com rankings tell you nothing about what goes on at physical bookstores or over at bn.com, but it’s an easy, free indicator of how well a book is selling.

The Myths of Innovation, Amazon.com sales 5/15-8/15:

And for comparison, below are comparative sales rankings for The art of project management for its first 3 months of sales. The graphs aren’t to scale, but it’s easy to see that my first book (below) had slightly better amazon sales rankings than my 2nd (above). Both sets of numbers are respectable: both books have hovered on and off various amazon and O’Reilly bestseller lists, but the question is, what explains the difference in sales? Shouldn’t a successful book aimed at a bigger audience generate more sales?

PR summary - For Myths of Innovation:

• Lectures, talks & book tour. I did ~25 lectures promoting the book, including speaking at conferences like OSCON, Adaptive path MX, and E-Tech, and book-tour style gigs in the Bay area at places like Google (video here), Apple, Adobe and E-bay.
• O’Reilly support. O’Reilly’s Sara Peyton sent out over a hundred promotional copies of the book, pinged and re-pinged reviewers, schmoozed various people of influence on my book’s behalf, and helped line up speaking and interview opportunities.
• Blog & Mailing list. I (ab)used the full reach of this blog and my mailing lists to drive interest in the book, from related essays, blog posts on innovation, to blatant requests for support from readers.
• The book has received amazing reviews : 16 amazon reviews (4.5 avg), major positive reviews from digital-web, slashdot and lifehacker. I was also fortunate to get over 20 rock star endorsements for the book from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Tom Kelley of IDEO, Don Norman and others.
• Radio & Podcast. I work worked with O’Reilly on a radio tour: I’ve done nearly 30 radio interviews and podcasts, including high profile time on IT conversations and NPR’s Think.

By comparison this is more than twice the amount of PR effort, in terms of my own time, than for The art of project management.

The surprise has been that despite the increased effort, a better written book, and a higher profile / sexier topic, the new book has sold well, but trailed The art of project management by comparison for their respective first 3 months of sales.

Assumptions / Lessons learned:

• No one fully understands sales. Everyone has an opinion, sure, but no one can predict what happens or explain why (but watch them take credit after the fact :). There are too many factors, many beyond the control of the author or publisher. I’ve yet to get expert advice that didn’t contradict advice from another equally reputable expert. Remember, some great books fail to sell, and many awful books make bestseller lists. Most editors / agents / publicists require several rounds of cocktails before they’ll admit what happens is beyond their control or, at times, their comprehension.
• Sales oversimplified is easy. The only productive formula is: quality of book + ability to connect the book to interested people with cash to spend. That last part is important: it’s not TV ads you want, it’s finding people naturally interested enough to buy. If you’re writing about widgets, odds are high you know better where to find those naturally interested in widgets than your publisher or publicist does, and you know what messages are most likely to entice them. For Myths, as a more general audience book, the messaging and targeting was harder to develop.
• Assumption: bigger topics sell better. I assumed the Myths of Innovation would have a larger audience than the art of project management, since the topic of creative thinking and innovation are much broader, and more compelling, than the topic of managing projects. The book is a much better read on a more important topic, written in a journalistic, fast paced, comical style. But I’ve learned the broader the topic, the more competition there is. To make a dent in a bigger category requires more effort, more word of mouth advocates, than a niche book. There are fewer writers writing about project management, and the bar for scoring a sale is lower. I’m convinced Myths can outsell The art of pm, but it may take longer to happen.
• Is PR for web/blogs more effective than PR for mass media?. Looking back over my PR hours, my bet is that on a per hour basis, time spent pitching bloggers and online writers paid off in more sales than radio, podcasts or other mass market PR did. The data is better too: I can track the day a major blog review hit to spikes in amazon.com sales, but I can’t say that for any podcast, book tour lecture or printed review. This post by the current holder of the NYT bestseller list #1 slot goes further, claiming his success was entirely based on attracting online attention.

Overall, my plan is to keep learning. My goal is to be a career author so any positive PR, even PR that doesn’t translate directly into sales, may pay off for the next book or for the next speaking gig. But if you know something I don’t, have advice from experience or your own war stories to share, please chime in.

Posted in Myths of Innovation, On writing | 17 Comments »

For reasons I can’t fully explain here, the 2nd edition of Art of project management will have a new title. Yes, it’s a huge pain in the ass, but this stuff happens - and i swear, my publisher and I would avoid this if we could, but as things turned out, we can’t - that’s all I can say. We’ll do everything we can to make sure this change is clear to people who pick up the book.

As far as the 2nd edition itself:

Based on your feedback, the current goal is to add:

• Exercises & situations for applying lessons from each chapter (TOC here)
• A discussion guide, for use in reading groups
• A new chapter (topic TBD)
• Updated references, corrections, and other trivia

Now - the hard part - the title: my editor are debating options and wanted to ensure input from readers of the first edition, and possible readers of the 2nd - That’s you. If you want to write in a candidate, hit other. Some candidates are close to the original title, others go their own way.

I promise the results will be part of the decision making process. Cheers.

Posted in On writing, art of project management | 24 Comments »

Over at the Jem Report, Jem Matzan had some great questions for me about how my studies of innovation relate to the open source model of software development. Here’s a taste:

Do you think that being able to see and modify a program’s source code is a good method of innovation?

SB: Sure. Understanding how things work is the fastest way to learn and gives people who come later reusable, proven methods for doing things. But at the same time, it provides sets of assumptions that are more efficient to follow than to reconsider or reinvent. So depending on what level of innovation we’re talking about (a feature? a product? a line of products? a paradigm?) access to source code has different levels of value. And there’s also the value of mystery — sometimes a locked box forces people to be more creative since they have to invent their own approach. Being angry at that locked box and wanting to figure it out can drive people to innovate who’d be bored if they had permission to take it apart and see the source (as the legions of hackers and reverse-engineers out there can attest).

It’s a great interview and you can read the whole thing here.

Posted in Innovation, Software/Web development | No Comments »

Every author I know gets asked the same question: How do you write a book?

It’s a simple question, but it causes unexpected problems. On the one hand, it’s nice to have people interested in something I do. If I told people I fixed toasters for a living, I doubt I’d get many inquires. People are curious about writing and that’s cool and flattering. Rock on.

But on the other hand, the hand involving people who ask because they have an inkling to do it themselves, is that writing books is a topic so old and so well trod by so many famous people that anyone who asks me, with the serious intent of discovering secret advice from my small brain and limited writing experience, is hard to take seriously.

Here’s the short honest truth: 20% of the people who ask me are hoping to hear this - Anyone can write a book. They want permission. Truth is you don’t need any. There is no license required. No test to take. Writing, as opposed to publishing, requires almost no financial or physical resources. A pen, a paper and effort are all that has been required for hundreds of years. If Voltaire and Marquis de Sade could write in prison, then you can do it in suburbia, at lunch at work, or after your kids go to sleep.

If you want to write, kill the magic: a book is just a bunch of writing. Anyone can write a book. It might suck or be incomprehensible, but so what: it’s still a book. Nothing is stopping you right now from collecting all of your elementary school book reports, or drunken napkin scribbles, binding them together at kinkos for $20, slapping a title on the cover, and qualifying as an author. Want to write a good book? Ok, but get in line since most pro authors are still trying to figure that out too.

Writing a good book, compared to a bad one, involves one thing. Work. No one wants to hear this, but if you take two books off any shelf, I’ll bet my pants the author of the better book worked harder than the author of the other one. Call it effort, study, practice, whatever. Sure there are tricks here and there, but really writing is a kind of work.

Getting published. 30% of the time the real thing people are asking is how do you find a publisher. As if there wasn’t a phone book or, say, an Internet-thingy where you can look this stuff up. Writers-market is literally begging to help writers find publishers. Many publishers, being positive on the whole idea of communication, put information on how to submit material on their website. And so do agents. The grand comedy of this is how few writers follow the instructions. That’s what pisses off all the editors: few writers do their homework.

The sticking point for most wanna-be published authors is, again, the work. They want to hear some secret that skips over the hard parts. Publishers are rightfully picky and they get pitched a zillion books a day. It takes effort to learn the ropes, send out smart queries, and do the research required to both craft the idea for a book, and then to propose it effectively. So while writing is a rejection prone occupation, even for the rock-stars, finding a publisher is not a mystery. In fact the whole game is self-selective: people who aren’t willing to do the leg-work of getting published are unlikely to be capable of the leg-work required to finish a decent manuscript.

But that said - it’s easier today to self-publish than ever. Really. But again, this requires work, so many prefer to keep asking writers how they got published instead of just doing it themselves.

Being famous and wealthy: Now this is the kicker. About 50% of the time the real thing people want to know is how to become a famous millionaire rock-star author dude. As if a) I qualified, b) I could explain how it happened, or c) I’d be willing to tell.

First, this assumes writing is a good way to get rich. Not sure how this one started but writing, like most creative pursuits, has always been a less than lucrative lifestyle. Even if a book sells well, the $$$$ to hour ratio will be well below your average corporate job, without the health benefits, sick days, nor the months where you can coast by without your boss noticing. These days people write books after they’re famous, not before. And if the only books you read are bestsellers, well, you have a myopic view of the publishing world. Over 100k books are published in the US annually, and few sell more than a few thousand copies, and what causes books to sell may have little to do with how good a book is. Either way, to justify the effort you’ll need reasons other than cash.

Discouraged yet? Good. Here is the upside: I love writing books. I love reading books. I love the entire notion that people can make things up in their mind and then make them real on a page, for the pleasure or utility of someone else. That’s just awesome. If you like writing, if you enjoy the bittersweetness of chasing words into sentences, then you might love writing books too, despite, or even because of, everything I said above. If so, get to work - now :)

If you were hoping for more practical advice:

• Writing hacks: part 1 - starting - What to do when the page is blank.
• Thinking like your editor: getting non-fiction published, Susan Rabiner.
• The forest for the trees: an editors advice to writers, Betsy Lerner.
• Writer’s market. Where and how to sell what you write.
• National novel writing month - You must check this out.
• Or leave a comment below. I am, despite the curmudgeonly vibe, happy to answer thoughtful questions.

Posted in On writing | 253 Comments »

O’reilly’s ignite event, a fun gathering of geekish entertainment, is on again - same venue (Capital Hill’s CHAC), but an entirely new round of 5 minute talks.

I always have fun at these things and highly recommend them - have a few drinks, watch people scramble to do a presentation in 300 seconds, and meet the local tech community all at the same time. The talks this time include:

Make Art Not Content, Scotto Moore
Hacking Chocolate, Shawn Murphy
Small medicine: Nanotechnology and biology, Deepak Singh
Run the Government: A Primer for Online Citizens, Sarah Schacht
No, not skin: Epidemiology for the layman, Maegan Ashworth
How to buy a new car, Rob Gruhl

and more.

When: Tomorrow, Wed. August 8th, 8:30pm (6:30pm for the Make event)
Where: CHAC

I can’t make it this time, but I’ll back for the next one.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

Here’s a short, fun, hack-centric essay on creative thinking. It’s loosely based on the course I taught recently at the University of Washington.

Essay #56: Creative thinking hacks.

Posted in Essays, creative thinking | 5 Comments »

The fine folks at Google have posted two of the lectures I’ve done at the Google campus over the last two years. Each is about an hour long.

Lessons from the browser wars (youtube)
The myths of innovation (youtube)

Thanks to my hosts at Google, Chad Thornton, Ken Norton and Robin Jeffries. And of course the tech folks who video taped, edited and posted these things.

Posted in On Tour | 2 Comments »

In case you haven’t noticed, my essay how to detect bullshit hit the top 10 on digg today, and the site is struggling to keep up.

The fine folks at duggmirror have a mirrored copy available.

Posted in Essays | No Comments »

I don’t write about it often but I’m a huge film fan. For awhile now I’ve known about the works at Overcast Media, but they’ve been in stealth mode, under the radar.

Finally, with this coverage by the Seattle Times, I’m free to tell you: If you’ve ever wanted to create your own DVD commentary, or make commentaries for TV shows or other media, you’re in for a pleasant surprise.

Roger Ebert and others have talked about this idea for years, and finally it looks like someone is making it happen.

Their new beta release is invite only - but you can sign up for an invitation right now.

(Disclosure: Richard Stoakley, Overcast Media’s CEO, is an old friend. He had the office across the hall from mine at Microsoft on the Internet Explorer team, circa 1997)

Posted in Innovation, Web 2.0 / social software | 1 Comment »