One easy way to break down all of this innovation stuff is to talk about experiments. What changes to you make at work where you are unsure of the outcome?

I make the argument in this Harvard Business post, titled, Do you experiment at work? that experiments are everything. It’s the easiest way to think about how positive change happens.

Give it a spin and let me know what you think.

Posted in Innovation, Management | 9 Comments »

The Personal MBA folks have released a update to their reading list, the core of their program for people who want an MBA style education without the formal program and bank-breaking costs.

I’ve asked the question, Was your MBA worth it over on Harvard Business. If you have an MBA or have thought about one, I’m curious to know what you think - head over a check it out.

Posted in Management, Teaching/Training, books | 1 Comment »

Five years ago I started a simple little discussion list called pmclinic. The idea was simple: e-mail out a real world management situation on Monday, discuss it all week, write a summary on Friday.

Unlike most discussion lists, the idea created a surprisingly high signal to noise ratio. As the months went by, without any PR or much of a web presence, the list grew. Today the list has over 1000 members. We’ve covered hundreds of situations, and the list is still going strong.

There are dozens of things that need to be done, from making the list archives public, to getting the list out of the technology dark ages. And the best way for that to happen is to hand the reigns over to someone new.

This opportunity could be great for either a veteran who’s looking for something fun and different to work on with big networking opportunities, or even a rock star intern, college student, or journeyman who’s looking for experience and to build a reputation.

Job title: Project Manager

Project: PMCLINIC 2.0

Description: Lead the planning, brainstorming, organization and development of a new online community for the 1,000+ community of leaders, PMs and managers who reside on the legendary pmclinic. Objectives include taking the list out of the technological dark ages and onto the web, while retaining the stellar signal to noise ratio, and e-mail only options, subscribers cherish. It’s a huge opportunity to play a rare leadership role on a high visibility project in the tech-sector, software development and project management communities.

The current forum has a ghetto web home: http://www.scottberkun.com/pmclinic/.

What you will get:

• Ridiculous amounts of autonomy and leadership opportunities
• Use of Scott Berkun, or other select list personalities of your choice, as your top henchman & aides
• Some funding for webhosting and other basic costs
• Serious industry fame and acclaim
• But no salary - this is a volunteer position

Skills required:

• Ability to lead a small virtual volunteer team
• Talent for recruiting, nagging, rewarding, and bribing volunteers
• Willingness to work without immediate financial reward
• Zero tolerance for bullshit / High standards for what you put your name on
• Pride, Passion, Attention to detail, Sarcasm, Mind-control, Omnipotence (optional, but desired)
• Skill with (at least some of ): web development, mailing list software, wikis, web design, mastering things you claim you know but really don’t until after you’re hired, networking with people who possess skills you do not

How to apply:

1. Re-read the above, carefully this time.
2. Send a brief note and a resume to info at scottberkun.com
3. No specific experience required. Just need to convince me you’ll kick ass in this role.

Posted in PM-Clinic | 6 Comments »

Stumbled across, via dive into mark, a clever tool for making word art from any text. For kicks, I plugged in the entire first chapter of The Myths of Innovation, and here’s what we got (click here for the full-size version).

The tool is called Wordle. It’s free and easy to use. Check it out.

Posted in Design, Myths of Innovation | 2 Comments »

I’m a big fan of the TV Show The Wire. They managed to capture something true about how systems work, and fail, and also how people, both good and bad, find ways to manipulate any system to their own ends. If you’re into crime or police drama, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The reason I’m thinking about The Wire is this post by Stewart Freedman, Professor at the Wharton School. He identifies a few themes from the show folks can learn from. I have half a post of my own thoughts, but for now take a look at his.

Leadership on The Wire.

Posted in Management | No Comments »

Over on Harvard Business, I wrote a short piece claiming innovation is over-rated . It has caused a bit of a stir - 25 comments so far.

I take the position that innovation is a distracting word, and that great companies win because of the quality of their products, not how new the ideas in them are. What do you think?

Posted in Innovation, Management | 4 Comments »

I love wandering used bookstores, as there is always a magic tome back there, lying in waiting under layers of dust, that when found will blow my mind. There is a lack of pretension in old books that amps up their power in ways no NYTimes bestseller can ever match.

Nearly a decade ago I found a copy of Loren Eisley’s The Night Country: Reflections of a bone-hunting man, in a $1 stack. I had no idea who he was or what he was writing about, but the strange title and stranger cover drew me in. He’s an amazing writer. And he was one of the first to put my faith in writers who can transcend topics and genres and simply blow my mind with thoughts and words. You could have put Eisley in a cardboard box for an hour, and he’d have an essay that would change your mind about something important you’ve never even thought about before.

Another great find in the dark back used book racks was the Encyclopedia of Ignorance (EOI). Finally a tome about the infinity of things we do not know, that are never represented in books! A piece of my sanity was restored in this book, as I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling that we know much less about the universe and everything than we pretend we do.

Over on Kottke today, is mention of Wikipedia’s version of the EOI: The list of unsolved problems. This is great, except…it’s tiny! Ridiculously small! I’m hoping wikipedians will pick up the slack, but right now the EOI is my go to resource for things I don’t know.

Posted in books, philosophy | No Comments »

The irony of my writings about innovation is how little interest I have in the latest trends. Sure, I keep up enough to have meaningful commentary: it’s my job. But at the same time everyone I meet in the context of “innovation expert” is surprised I don’t own an i-phone, mostly use a 2003 model laptop, and often prefer writing on legal pads to word processors. I am a total throwback.

Despite my knowledge of design and how things work, I’m mostly useless in talk about the latest gadget or software: unless you show it to me so I can play with it, odds are good I haven’t used it before. I’m a Luddite sympathizer. A technological skeptic. My passions lie in the timeless: the things so deeply good they connect and re-connect with us for years, decades and lifetimes. I’m ridiculously happy about the pursuit of timeless things, and many of my favorite timeless things do not have on or off switches.

I’m not an old man, but I’m not young either. At 36 (!) I’ve been fortunate to figure out many things that make me happy and it turns out a good percentage of them are not electronic. In fact I find my most memorable days in my life involved less time spent in front of computers, rather than more.

The trap is that so much of the world, the world of my generation, spirals around the web and its various technologies - there is simply no choice but to spend hours a day in it. I love its conveniences but its burdens are almost as numerous. I swear, if I could swing it somehow, I’m convinced I’d be a happier man in a lifestyle where the majority of my interactions with people were in person, rather than online.

If I could conjure up my fantasy world, a world comprised of amusement parks, water parks, huge untouched forests, Greenwich village (hey, it’s a fantasy), joyous, funny, passionate people, all on a safe tropical beach island, with basketball courts with great runs everywhere, all things online would be a nice cute treat I’d taste maybe once every few days. The real world, when done right, kicks the virtual worlds ass. I mean, it’s not even close. Great websites and video games, as much as I enjoy them, don’t hold a candle to great meals with great friends and fantastic sex with great lovers.

Now sure, technology can enhance the real world. No argument. But so little of what we put our techno-faith in adds something good, without taking something good away. I score most gadgetry as a net loss.

I take pleasure and pride in my willingness to turn things off. When on vacation I don’t long for the web or for checking e-mail. But that said, as of late I’ve found myself victimized by my own choices: working alone, traveling often, as writers and lecturers often do, makes in person interactions with close friends less frequent than I’d like. I meet many people, which is great, but spreading myself across so many relationships can’t help but make those connections thinner than we all admit. And as much as I’m fond of using online interactions to fill gaps, the gap remains. And somehow I know it’s the kind of gap no combination of IM, twitter, e-mail, blogs, or whatever the next communication thing we proclaim as our savior can ever fill. But it’s there, and it’s the way of the day, so there I am.

I can’t close this missive with a confident prescription - I know only who I am and not who you are. And I confess that often at parties, when I’ve been drinking, I comically ramble on about the above (I’m an entirely passionate, philosophically comic and lovable drunk) - and when I do I know most people think I’m nuts. Cute, charming maybe, but nuts. So I don’t expect my advice to mean much, but it’s worth a shot, just for kicks.

Right now, turn at least one thing off. If you can, turn all your gadgets and beeping things off, and listen to the sound of the world without them. Then stop reading this, or whatever thread the web teases you with next and do something crazy like… go outside. It’s summer! Grab your favorite person within 500 feet of you (by definition, there is always one person you like the most of those available within 500 feet), and go for walk. Lie in the grass under the sun and split clouds with your mind. Spend more time and money than you should at lunch (dont you dare eat at your desk! It’s a crime!). Food becomes you, literally, so be mindful of it while you eat it. And talk to someone while eating it, or at least watch and observe the waiters while they work, they do more than you usually notice. A long, mindful break from digital things can do wonders for the mind. And I bet when you do return to whatever digital thing you felt you could not leave, you wont feel so dependent on it as you did before. And that’s a good feeling to have.

Posted in Innovation, personal, rant | 5 Comments »

Not sure how you feel, but my writing around here has gotten stale. I’m not writing as much, or as well, as I’d like. The best trick? Mix things up.

So when Katherine Bell, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Digital, offered a slot on their popular business blog, I said yes for 4 reasons.

1. She’s cool (never pass up a chance to work with good people).
2. It has been ages since I’ve been a regular columnist under someone else’s banner.
3. I’ll be on the same roster as business heavyweights Gary Hammel, Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor, and many others.
4. And perhaps most interesting of all, is to find out how much trouble I can get into at Harvard :)

And you can help: What does the Harvard Business audience need to hear? What’s wrong with Harvard Business review? If you could have me write about anything over there, what would it be?

First post is up: Why innovation is over-rated.

I’m still blogging here, don’t worry. But there’s another twist coming. Stay tuned.

Posted in News | 2 Comments »

Background: Foo Camp is the legendary annual social/tech event O’Reilly Media runs for Friends of O‘reilly. Two things make the event an amazing experience: 1) high quality invite list (except myself of course) and 2) Everyone camps out on tents on the lawn. This drops pretension to near zero, and combined with a self-defined agenda, people are set up to have their minds opened. Put 1 & 2 together and crazy, funny, wild, open, smart, thought-provoking, unexpected conversations happen all on their own. FOO Camp is a true highlight of my many travels - and it puts in relief how limited most conference experiences are, despite how easily replicable the lessons of unconference style formats can be.

If you want a general write up on this year’s FOO Camp, read this piece on TechCrunch first, and I’ve written before about past FOO camps and unconferences here. Instead, what follows below is a sanitized list of notes from my moleskin.

• High quality is good for the environment. One session by Make’s Arwen Oreilly was about luxury and nature, and how buying a $50 hairbrush that lasts 50 years isn’t a luxury, it’s actually better for the environment. Low price items often have low long term value (e.g. IKEA). Good quote “High-technology is what your parents did not use, and what your children will not use either” - Saul Griffith said it, but attributed it to someone else. How well designed can a cell-phone or laptop really be if it lasts 1/25th of a lifetime?
• Zoe Keating is cool. Didn’t know who she was until after I’d chatted with her here and there, which is funny because had I known she was a musician I would have chatted with her about totally different things. Her stuff sounds amazing - from what I’ve heard so far it’s best described as kick-ass experimental, yet melodic, electronic chello - just downloaded from itunes. I wish someone had done a talk on “how composing music is like writing code”.
• Why do adults stop making up games? As a kid in Queens we’d make up new games all the time, every day. A zillion variations of tag. Basketball with no traveling. On and on. Why not now? At FOO I played The lost game of Olympia, a crazy race game involving humming, blindfolds, mazes and lots of laughing. You can watch a video of my team playing at FOO here. Worked great to meet people, touch people, and focus on movement for awhile instead of thinking. If the world can be saved, I suspect gamemaster Jane McGonigal at AvantGame.com will have something to do with it.
• Beekeeping is cool. Turns out there are quite few beekeepers in the tech elite, or at least people who have read The art and adventure of beekeeping which include two of my favorite people I’ve met at FOO - Brian Fitzpatrick and Nat Torkington (And Pathable’s Jordan Schwartz is a beekeeper too). I ordered a copy. The vibe of this session was the value of observation. How learning patience and skills of seeing leads to the insights people struggle to obtain.
• Everyone has public speaking disaster stories. I ran a session where everyone told stories of their own public speaking horror stories. Turns out, everyone has a public speaking horror story. The only collection of public speaking disaster stories I know of is Mortification - I wish there were more collections like these.
• I know the secret of happiness. I went to a session on happiness hacks (Run by HB Segel, Kim & Linda Stone), and the funny thing was how happy all the people who came seemed to be. Most of the advice are things I suspect most people know, and I found myself circling the same core idea over and over: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night follows day, thou cant not then be false to another man”. No one can follow all of these hacks. Every person will sort out what to try on their own, and the better people know themselves, the better their odds of choosing well. As fun as the session was, I want the same people in the room again for a session titled “How to know yourself”.
• Related quote “Being happy is separating the difference between what I care about, and what I think I care about” - I’d been drinking and can barely read my handwriting (so the quote itself might be wrong), and I suspect it was said to me by Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction.

Posted in On Tour, Teaching/Training | 4 Comments »

This morning I taped a short segment for the MSNBC show “Your Business”, hosted by JJ Ramberg. The segment is about innovation (surprise!) and how some customers create their own customizations of existing products into new products.

I’m on for maybe 5 minutes, with Jeffrey Carr from NYU and Farnoosh Torabi from Thestreet.com.

The show airs Sunday July 13th, 7:30am EST, MSNBC.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

• The innovation that is the checklist. One of the many things we take for granted: the invention of the checklist. (Hat tip, Robby)
• Three summaries of trends in the book publishing industry.
• History’s best interface designs - don’t agree with all of these but I liked the low tech vibe.
• Five possible futures for Microsoft.

Posted in linkfest | 2 Comments »