One perk of an independent life - I’m more free than most to travel the world and see amazing things.

Last week I was in Brussels to give a lecture at Namahn, a wonderful design consulting firm, and Joannes, the company founder, was kind enough to take me to Rene Magritte’s house, which is now a small museum. He’s one of my favorite artists of all time - to see where he worked was a very special thing for me.

One of his most famous paintings is The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images). You may have seen it before:

The text in the painting reads “This is not a pipe”.

It seems like a joke.  First time I saw this painting in college I just snickered and moved on. But later I’d realize he’s reminding you that pictures of things are not the same as things. That movies about things are not the same as the things they are about (e.g. Twittering about something is not the same as doing that thing). It’s deep, funny, interesting, philosophical and simple all at the same time, which is what I hope my work to be like.

Walking around the house he lived in, many of the objects that appear in his paintings can be found, including the pipe:

I also saw his bowler hat, the fireplaces and stairs that appeared in many of his paintings.

Here’s what I learned:

• You can be creative with anything. He worked with simple objects and made profound statements . You don’t need complex things to think complex thoughts or make important points.
• You can be serious and funny at the same time. There’s a sense of play in many of his paintings, and also various inside jokes to his wife and friends in his work.
• No one gets a free ride. I didn’t know he spent many years making advertisements and posters to make a living - many of them were on exhibition in the house. It wasn’t until later in his life that his paintings were worth enough to focus on them.
• You can work anywhere. His studio was between the only kitchen and only bathroom on the first floor of his house.  It’d be the last place I’d want to work for hours, but it clearly worked well for him.  Apparently it had the best light in the house, and he prefered working there to the much larger studio out in the back. Here’s a pic of his studio. It’s a tiny little cramped space.

Sadly I just missed the opening in Belgium of the Rene Magritte museum, which will be the largest exhibition of his works anywhere in the world. It opens June 2, 2009.

You can see many of his works here - I suspect you’ve seen some of these before even if you didn’t know the name of the man who made them.

Posted in On Tour, creative thinking, history | 5 Comments »

Found this great post from Slate’s Moneybox via Brady @ O’Reilly.

I think Tufte would be happy.

You can and should play with the interactive map yourself.

Posted in Design, creative thinking | 1 Comment »

One of the grand confusions of modern life is the confusion between what is good and what is popular. Most of the time people confuse being popular with being good, which isn’t necessarily true.

I knew a guy in high school. He was very popular. But I don’t think anyone would say he was good at anything. Not really.

I also knew another guy in high school. He was pretty good at lots of things. But for some reason, he wasn’t very popular.

I suspect if these two guys ever met the universe would have exploded. Good thing that didn’t happen.

The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre. Their internal goodness detector is disappointed with what they make.

And then there are the artistes. People who develop their own sense of what they think is good and insist on striving for it, no matter what anyone else says. Provided they don’t expect anyone else to care, these people are quite interesting. Although there is nothing worse than an artiste who insists on telling you how stupid you are for not seeing how brilliant their work is.

Digging through history I’ve found it interesting how characters like Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and Bukowski balanced the popular vs. good challenge. Most famous artists took commissions, and in some cases those commissions resulted in their most famous work (For example, Da Vinci and Michelangelo had clients and lived mostly on commission income. If you wonder why much of what’s in museums are portraits of old wealthy people, it’s because they’re the only ones who could afford to pay for paintings). In other cases, like Bukowski, Henry Miller, Van Gogh, they never really compromised. Sometimes to their own detriment.

But what most creative people want, all the ones i know, is to be both good and popular. They want to achieve their own sense of goodness, while at the same time pleasing other people. It’s a tightrope. Especially once you’ve been popular here or there, people tend to want more of the same. And that rarely fits in with a creative person’s sense of goodness. So a few big popular victories early on can put handcuffs on how good, from the creators standpoint, they can ever be while still being popular. My first book was on project management, and I suspect for some people, no matter how many books I write on other things, I’ll always be the project management guy. And that’s ok.

How do you balance your own sense of good vs. your sense of popular? Do you find clear places where they are in conflict (say your client’s sense of good vs. your own?) How to you balance this out and stay sane? Do you divide your creative energy into “work creative” and “personal creative”, giving yourself a safe place to be an artiste? Or is this more than you’ve ever thought about what is, perhaps, a silly and pretentious line of thinking?

Whatever your opinion, I’d like to hear it.

Posted in creative thinking, philosophy | 14 Comments »

I’m stuck in the Vancouver airport, waiting for them to find a new plane.  Hard to complain about waiting for a new plane, when the old plane broke. Tell me the current plane might explode and I’m happy to wait, thank you very much.

Waiting in at the gate, in between trying not to strangle the kid dancing precariously close to my luggage, and the guy with laptop problems on my left who has his volume set to 11 (I will be hearing the Windows startup song in my sleep), I made a sketch for ideas in organizations.

The arrows are the paths of different ideas. The box in the middle is the organization.

Whenever leaders want more innovation, they typically start by adding more inputs into the process. They seek out more ideas. Hey, lets brainstorm! Or maybe we should crowdsource! Or how about getting everyone to mindmap!

Executives often do this flinchy sort of thing and it’s big news at many corporations to start “idea programs” to encourage people to submit ideas.

These programs are launched, ideas are submitted, and there is much rejoicing.

But little change.

The reason there is little change is that idea inputs were never the problem. The bottleneck was further upstream. Crowdsourcing, brainstorming, mindmapping, and the dozens of other techniques people obsess about help create early idea volume, but do little to help the curators, the people who winnow down the hundreds of ideas down to dozens, and dozens down to a handful. 

It’s much more useful to study where the bottlenecks are, when and why new ideas are killed, and who the people are that are killing them.

If you have 1000 new ideas a month, but 0 prototypes are ever made from them, what good is another 2000 ideas? It’s much better to study why there is no time or rewards for prototyping and focus on getting that number to go up.

An easy diagnostic for innovation is the list of 10 stages - Where do ideas die in your world? That’s the place to study and make changes to help ideas survive longer in your organization.

The real challenge is getting ideas out the door - not how you generate ideas. It’s more useful to study how ideas die - what reasons are used? Who has the power to do it? And when and why are they using it?

Sorting out the lifecycle of ideas in an organization requires study and thought, while slapping more idea generation techniques on the front does not.

Posted in Innovation, Management, creative thinking | 9 Comments »

On Tue April 14th I’ll be doing a live webcast for UIE on Why designers fail and what to do about it. This will be the full 90 minute version of my talk, with some new twists and updates specially designed for this webcast, and it includes tactics and approaches to thinking about failure and how both to change your philosophy about experimentation, but also tactics for learning as much as you can from your failures, and failures of designers and creators throughout history.

For this 90 min live talk, a talk you can participate in from anywhere in the world, wearing only your underwear if you choose as I won’t be able to see you, for $129 - Here’s my promo video for the session, with audio voiceover, including a last slide that details the value you’ll get from tuning in.

Details and registration info here - Use my promo code BERKUN to get the discounted price of $99.

Posted in Design, On Tour, creative thinking | No Comments »

A common problem experts, like user experience designers, have is working for an executive who has no idea what they do.

The trap is often the expert, in this case, a designer, is hired by the VP, but no one anticipates how many things need to change in the organization for the designer to be of use.  So the designer sits on the sidelines, frustrated, while the VP is happy since now s/he can say “We have a design expert on staff” even if that expert isn’t contributing much.

This situation is common, but it’s not a disaster. It just means you have to be your own advocate in making your contributions visible. Here’s a battle plan:

• Make small wins. Pick a few well chosen areas and people to work with, and make simple but clearly visible improvements to the work around you.  This will force responses from your peers and give you a sense of who is excited about what you can do, and who doesn’t care.
• Get a supporter. Of the people interested in your work, who has the best combination of influence and interest in your work? They are your ally and you need to cultivate their support. Start with sharing your goals and asking their advice. “I’d like to be involved earlier in the decision making process. How do you suggest I make this happen here?”  As a political outsider, you need insider support to have any chance of growing political capital.
• Find something small and specific to ask for. Anyone who does not know what you do has no reason to invest in you. Your relationship with them begins with you asking for something small and reasonable, and using it for the benefit of the entire team. Ask for a small amount of money, ask for a small amount of time from programmers, but ask. Offer something in return: higher quality, greater efficiency, higher profits. Something. When you get what you ask for, hit it out of the park - do an amazing job. You may only get one shot so make it good. Show the results and if everyone is positive ask for something a little bigger. Repeat.
• Use their language, not yours.  Stop using your domain language, and translate into the language of the people in power. This may mean learning about P&Ls, marketing plans, test regressions, or other terms, but speak their language and offer your value in their language. You are on their turf and should act accordingly. Think of yourself as a political Marine, adapting to the terrain you land in. If you can’t translate your work into terms they understand you will fail for that reason alone.
• Show an example from a company/team they admire.  If there is another project in your company where you role is well understood, use them as an example. Show how your counterparts in that organization interact, and how they benefit from it. If you can’t find an example in your company, look to other companies your VP admires.
• Worry about your peers first.  It’s hard to score points up the food chain without a good reputation at your own place in the org chart. It’s daft to take on the VP when the middle level managers don’t know who you are either, or worse, think of you as someone who complains all the time but adds no value. You might have a local manager who is well connected up the food chain:  if you can get a small amount of support from them, it will open doors you can not open yourself.
• Maybe the VP doesn’t need to know. VPs often have less power or influence than you think. There may be a team lead or group manager who is the true power source for your project. Think carefully about what power you need to be successful and who can grant it to you.  It’s likely someone more within reach in the org chart than the VP.  And of course, consider this: the best way to be introduced into the VPs power circle is by invitation. If your reputation for making big contributions precedes you, they may in fact seek you out, and not the other way around.

Also check out my free webcast this Thursday, March 19th, 10 am PST,  How Progress happens, which offers more tactics and inspiration on making change happen.

Posted in Design, Management, creative thinking | 4 Comments »

A few months ago I finally purchased a new cell phone, a Palm Centro, first in about 5 years. My review was positive, but as with most reviews, them come early in the life of using the thing, and you never get to hear what happens after months of of usage. So here’s a follow up review - Steve asked for one, so here it is (Hi Steve!).

In short: I still love this phone.

The good:

High ease of use, simple design, I love the keyboard (YMMV - see picture), it’s small enough to slide into any of my pockets and has decent to good battery life. There are various little UI design elements they got right, such as reply to a missed call with a txt message, a nice vibrate switch right on top of the phone (can switch it without taking it out of pocket), and an easily toggle-able flight mode for being on planes.

It has a handy pseudo-GPS feature, that uses cell-towers to triangulate position in google-maps. Works great. I use it all the time. It’s accurate to within 500-1000 feet which is enough to get a map I can figure out no matter where I am.

I rarely use the stylus that comes with the device - a finger works fine 90% of the time in all the UI I use.

The bad: There are a few minor complaints. Trying to be thorough here, but despite the list these things are minor. Rarely encountered or little impact.

• Minor performance issues. The phone can get lost when you have too many apps working - switching between them sometimes can be slow. In these moments it feels like the device needs more RAM.
• Web browser is adequate. I use it often and its fine. It’s definitely underpowered for large pages and it doesn’t handle this well. So if you happen to hit a complex 500kb table or something, the browser chokes - it will time itself out after 20 seconds or so, but it’s not fun. This is rare, but does happen if you’re doing heavy web browsing and end up on heavy duty pages. The close window button is too small to hit with a finger, so you need the stylus to kill the browser.
• The sync plug is a bear. It’s a strange plug, with a wide two pronged adapter. It’s impossible to get this thing out without a lot of force, and I’m always afraid I’m going to break it, which would make the phone impossible to sync. It is a durable plug, it’s just designed in a way that makes me nervous when I use it.
• PDF support is slow. There may be a better PDF viewer than the one I have, but the I have makes sleeping turtles look fast, and its UI is frustrating - feels like a bad port of a standalone viewer, not one designed for a small screen. It works, but is slow and annoying. I tried to read a restaurant menu through it once, scrolling around, trying to zoom in and out, and simply gave up.

So if you can’t wait for the Palm Pre, which looks pretty sharp, The Palm Centro (product info here) could be a good choice.

Posted in Design, Product reviews, creative thinking, mailbag | 2 Comments »

I’m getting a bit of roasting over on Forbes.com for gender bias - there were exactly zero women mentioned in the article.

Women are in fact my favorite half of the species. But my problem is the assumption that omission of diversity implies bias. I happen to be Ukrainian by heritage. Yet, there were zero Ukrainians mentioned in my post. Sure, there are a ridiculously smaller number of Ukrainians in the world than women, but the fact that I didn’t mention any of either doesn’t mean I went out of my way to exclude them.

In a 790 word article it’s not a surprise I used the most well known geniuses I could think of. It makes stronger points, provides more leverage and requires less explaining. All things useful to do in a short piece where comprehensiveness isn’t expected.

To get to the point, the fact is women and most minorities were denied many intellectual and creative opportunities in many cultures through Western history. The right to go to school, to publish, to research were denied and for generations there was an unnatural bias against women and minorities that repressed the possibility of them discovering or displaying their talents.

But regardless of the reason, if you study great creative and intellectual works in Western history, many of them were done by men. This does not mean men are better at becoming geniuses (however you define the term) than women - far from it - it just means that’s what happened. If you talk about innovation history, a disproportionate number of stories will involve men. Same for leaders of nations and authors of books - generally speaking, for hundreds of years, in most of Europe, women were not allowed to do either.

I was asked about this bias by the President of CMU when I lectured there last year, and the above answer is basically what i said then.

I do happen to know of many female geniuses or women of extraordinary or creative abilities. They didn’t fit this piece, but I’ve studied them. Here’s my list of favorites:

• Marie Curie - First person in history to win two Nobel Prizes (only other person to do it was Linus Pauling). She also discovered this little thing called radioactivity, a discovery she died for.
• Ada Lovelace - The first computer programmer in history. She is possibly an example of historic gender bias, as some of the work Babbage is credited with should be attributed to her.
• Georgia Okeefe - The movements of her creative work over a prolific lifetime are comparable to Picasso’s in many ways.
• Jane Austen - In many ways helped define the style and structure of the concept of a modern novel. I’m actually not a fan of her writing, but her impact and influence is worthy of study anyway - especially as her fame and influence was largely posthumous.

Posted in Innovation, The Art of PM book, creative thinking | 8 Comments »

One of my favorite things at Adaptive Path’s MX event this week was how they had designers assigned to make large drawings based on the current talk, as the talk was happening. It was real time art/design/creation - super cool.

Here’s Teresa Brazen’s drawing of my talk, Why designers fail:

The cool thing is that as I watched other people’s talks during the day, if ever I got bored I could watch their drawing being made in real time and see what the designer was calling out as key points, or even how they interpreted what was being said. I found it was a great, non distracting way to add to what was being presented. I really hope more events do this kind of thing.

Posted in Teaching/Training, creative thinking, public speaking | 4 Comments »

Up today is a tighter, leaner, slideshow enhanced version of an essay I wrote up on forbes.com called How to be genius. They’re running a series in partnership with O’Reilly Media and I was lucky enough to be asked to participate.

The original longer, extended edition version here.

Posted in creative thinking | No Comments »

Krishna makes an interesting point on his thought clusters blog about professions that involve getting paid for talking about the profession itself.

Historically most professions made this impossible. You can’t make a building about making a building, or prepare a meal that’s about preparing a meal. It’d be a real stretch if you tried (”The mashed potatoes represent the mashing of my mind in trying to decide what to make…”). Most kinds of work don’t create a narrative that’s easy for people to follow. But speaking and writing are based on narrative, this happens and then that happens, and on it goes. And you can tell a story about anything, including telling stories. Or telling stories about telling stories. Or blogging about speaking about telling stories about blogging.

The problem of course is that this gets annoying fast. People who hate Wallace’s Infinite Jest or Dave Egger’s A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, hate it because these works are self aware and self involved in a way narratives traditionally are not. But other people love these works for exactly the same reasons. Any kind of story can be made interesting if told well. Master storytellers can get away with a lot of things the rest of us can’t.

Personally I’m interested in writing and speaking for the same singular reason. It’s about making connections between people and ideas. That’s really all I care about. If I thought I could do that better with oil paints or interpretive dance I would. But since I’m pretty sure I can’t, so I’ll stick with things involving words.

Posted in On writing, creative thinking, public speaking | 3 Comments »

Last year I gave a talk at UIE 13 on some research I’ve done into why designers fail.

I’ll be talking about failure again at Adaptive Path’s MX event in March.

In the meantime, I had the pleasure of getting some fun questions from Henning Fischer, on the topic:

Henning Fischer [HF]: Scott, welcome and thank you for joining me. My first question for you is: What inspired you to look into the reasons why designers fail?

Scott Berkun [SB]: Hmm. Let’s see. FAILING. I’ve worked on many projects and many of them didn’t work out well, or up to my expectations. And in talking to other designers over the years, I’ve learned it’s rare to find a designer who can point to the finished product and say, “This is exactly all that I hoped it would be.”

Read the full interview here.

Posted in Design, On Tour, creative thinking | 1 Comment »