My webhost is having all sorts of problems today, and all of my email is down. Fun! If you’re email bounced, or you need to reach me, leave a comment. Should be resolved by the end of the day.

Posted in this site | No Comments »

I love stories of management and creative thinking that come from unexpected places. I have short article about the development of the Polaris nuclear missile, over on my Harvard Business. Check it out.

I hope you don’t mind these cross-blog links I’ve been posting. Let me know if you do.

Posted in Innovation, Management, harvard business | 7 Comments »

This bit of pithy advice is floating around the web. It’s so nice, tight and simple, much more useful than many of the self-helpy business books I’ve seen in the last few years. I mean, what percentage of your co-workers do even half of what’s on this list?

Found it here, but this seems to be the original source (Much like Corita Kent’s list of creative rules, there are many unattributed postings).

1. Do one thing at a time
2. Know the problem
3. Learn to listen
4. Learn to ask questions
5. Distinguish sense from nonsense
6. Accept change as inevitable
7. Admit mistakes
8. Say it simple
9. Be calm
10. Smile

Posted in Management | 9 Comments »

A few weeks ago I ran a little creative contest on inventions people would like to see. The best of the bunch, although there were many was from Carlos:

Ctrl+Zetit: an invention to undo things in life that just happened to you. Broke an expensive jar at your inlaws’s house? No problem… just Ctrl+Zetit!

Not a big fan of the name, but I sure would love this. I remember back at CMU, after an all nighter working on a programming project, going into the elevator, hiting the wrong floor and looking for the undo command. Carlos’ idea made me think of that moment, and a signed copy of Making things happen is on its way to him.

Thanks for all the great ideas - made my day!

Posted in creative thinking | 5 Comments »

One part of my full day seminar on leading breakthrough projects is about diagnosing creative failures. One of the traps of the word innovation is how vague it is: you have to break down where ideas die in your organization to understand where the problems are.

One idea lifecycle I’ve used is the one below. Ask yourself where your own ideas, ideas from your team, or ideas anywhere in your organization tend to die. That’s the point where work needs to be done to improve the number of ideas that survive to the next stage:

• Idea
• Pitch
• Proof of concept
• Prototypes
• Plan
• Acceptance of risk
• Commitment
• Execution
• Innovation
• Commodification

For example, in many organizations ideas die at the pitch. People fail to convince others to support their own ideas. There’s no reason to worry about risk taking and prototyping if people have poor skills at pitching.

Or perhaps ideas die at the prototype phase. Few people are able to convince management, or themselves, that the prototype has enough promise to write a proposed plan.

In some organizations I’ve found the real failure is in the individual. No one stopped them from pushing hard to move their own idea to the next phase, they just gave up on their own.

There are certainly other good lifecycles for ideas: but you should pick one. Only then can you ask your team where they feel their ideas die, giving you a sense of where the real creative roadblocks are.

Posted in Innovation, Management, creative thinking | No Comments »

My upcoming trips to Milwaukee (Sept 19th) and Chicago (Sept 22) are CANCELED. Had a fun little stay at the hospital last week and although I’m doing fine and don’t expect to die anytime soon, for general sanity it made sense to postpone these trips.

I do expect to reschedule both speaking engagements so stay tuned - and apologies for any inconveniences.

Posted in On Tour | 3 Comments »

Had a nice crowd of about 150, plus another 300 online at Microsoft today. The talk will be posted soon on the Microsoft research site, but in the meantime here are some of the good questions I was asked.

If you were there and recall others, or have some to add based on the Myths of Innovation talk (youtube version here for non-microsofties), fire away:

• How do you rationalize your statement that there is no single method, with your advice for managers (delegate) at the end of your talk?
• In your Luddite example you pointed out how hard it is to make change happen. Any advice for innovators on working around this challenge?
• Is Microsoft an immitiator? Given your experience here and elsewhere, how do you view the perception of MSFT and other companies as innovators or immitators?
• What is the role of culture in making innovation happens? Are there really as many recluses and lone geniuses as we think?

I’ll update this with my answers shortly.

Posted in Management, Microsoft, On Tour | 1 Comment »

I’ll be doing a lunch talk at DePaul University on Monday Sept 22nd, 11:45am. Thanks to my host, Professor Lisa Gundry, the talk will be open to the public. All that’s required is an RSVP by email.

What: Talk about Myths of Innovation + Q&A
When: Monday, September 22, 2008, 11:45-1:00
Where: DePaul Center (DPC) 11013 - Loop Campus directions.
Cost: Free!
RSVP: email creativity_center@depaul.edu

Description: How do you know whether a hot technology will succeed or fail? Or where the next big idea will come from? The best answers come not from the popular myths we tell about innovation, but instead from time-tested truths that explain how we’ve made it this far. These topics and more will be covered in this fun, interactive talk based on the bestselling book, The Myths of Innovation. Bring your toughest questions on creative thinking, innovation and management!

Hope to see you there - and please help spread the word.

Posted in On Tour | No Comments »

In writing my own review of Chrome, I stumbled across tons of articles about Google’s new browser. Many of them set off my hype and BS detector: over on Harvard Business I wrote this recap of the hype and my take on the reality.

Google Chrome: beyond the hype (Harvard Business)

Posted in harvard business, web browsers | 1 Comment »

I’ll be swinging by Microsoft next week to speak at the Microsoft Research lecture series. I’ll be talking about Innovation, and telling stories that didn’t make it into the Myths of Innovation book with lots of Q&A.

WHO: Scott Berkun
TITLE: The Myths of Innovation
WHEN: September 9, 2008
WHERE: 99/1919 (Redmond, WA, USA)
TIME: 1:30-3pm
HOST: Kim Ricketts and Kirsten Wiley

Posted in Microsoft, On Tour | 1 Comment »

I’ve written often about web browser design, so I happily downloaded Chrome, Google’s new web browser (download), a few hours ago. Although I’ve been running it through its paces, this is an early review, as its over days and weeks of use that some features shine, or disappoint. Disclosure: I worked on IE 1 to 5 for Microsoft in the 1990s, and currently use Firefox 3.0.1.

Summary: Chrome is a low-frills, light-weight, stable (for me) beta quality release. High points are the simple design, easy import of FF/IE bookmarks, and (promise of) greater performance. Low points are beta level completeness in UI, and few of the familiar frills from IE or Firefox. There are big bets in here that challenge existing browsers, but will take several versions to fulfill.

UI: The most notable move is starting with a thumbnail view of most recently visited pages. I’ve advocated for this in the past: anything a browser does to use past user behavior to accelerate future behavior is a win. Showing the choice of the ten most frequent places I go as the first place is downright basic UI design goodness. Otherwise there isn’t much UI to speak of. The the actual browser chrome is thin, making the name ironic. No menus. No home button (option to turn it back on). Dropdowns to the right of the address bar provide access to tools and options, much like IE7/Vista. Bookmarks, in a generic scrolling list, are accessed via “other bookmarks” in the lower right corner.

One clever perk is an improved find. Hitting Cntr-F extends the top right of the toolbar into an edit box, with a up/down arrow combo for moving through hits on the page.

Features: The big news is Incognito mode. You can open a window with maximum privacy: no cookies, no history, no nothing. Gripe is this can’t be a tab: it forces a new window. I was intrigued by this until I realized realized previous cookies still worked. So its not an entirely anonymous browser mode - it’s anonymous from the moment you create the window forward (either that, or I experienced a bug). History search is provided through the Most frequently used home page - it’s simple and worked well, and runs full screen (unlike FF or IE).

Another big move is task monitoring by tab. You can look at each tab as a separate process and kill individual tabs. Right click on the title bar, hit task manager, and there you go. In a couple of hours I didn’t get a chance to use this, but if it works as promised whole-browser shutdowns should be uncommon.

Performance: There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to test javascript perf - no stanard test suite i could find. Across the board of 3 different (kane, WD, SunSpider) test suites i ran, Chrome won. Margins ran between 20% to 100% improvement over FF or IE7. For subjective measures I spent a good half hour on Jay Is Games, as flash games tend to push browser & system perf to its limits, but didn’t notice significant differences. This is an ad-hoc perf analysis, and focused purely on Chrome’s strength (javascript), but it was nearly all in Chrome’s favor.

Platform . Much of the promise described in the Book about Google Chrome (Charmingly cartooned by Scott McCloud, but a 2 page doc would have been an easier read) is about the platform. Improved security, enhanced performance, and an architecture that makes plugins and extensions easier. It’s hard to test or evaluate these things in an afternoon. I definitely liked their story for what they’re doing and why, but platform plays require getting FireFox and IE developers to take advantage: a long and slow process, no matter how amazing the new kid on the block is.

Bugs/Gripes:

• Tools.Options. There should never be consumer facing UI with labels “Minor tweaks” and “under the hood”. Anything in Tools.Options is under the hood. Call the different groups something that helps me pick which grouping I need: Browser Preferences, Network Settings is easy split. This UI is a conceptual mess, which is fine for a beta and common for the UI ghetto that is often Tools.Options, but a proper UI designer should get in here and sanitize.
• Wrong Shortcuts. Rule #1 of being the new browser: make it easy for people from old browsers to switch. At best even early adopters will be switching back and forth between Chrome and something else for months. Most of the IE7/Firefox shortcut keys do not work in Chrome. Easy to fix, and hope to see this in the final release. It’s easy code. Why not have a FF or IE user mode that swaps in the right shortcuts (Firefox is guilty of this too)?

Chrome info and download

Posted in Design, web browsers | 23 Comments »