CMP Media runs the annual Jolt awards, the closest thing the tech sector has to the Oscars. They just announced this year’s finalists, and Myths of Innovation made the cut for books. O’Reilly’s Beautiful Code is in as well - Congrads!

You can see the full list of nominations here. Winners are announced at the SD West conference, March 2008. Anybody out there going? If I’m lucky enough to win, you can pretend to be me :)

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Spending some time this week cleaning up the website, and read through lots of old comments.

You folks out there who take a couple of minutes to comment help me in tons of ways. Most important, you let me know which posts anyone actually cares about. But you also attract more people to the site, encourage others to respond, and provoke me to keep thinking.

So by way of (an experimental) forms of thanks, I’m doing a comment lottery.

• On Monday December 17th, I’ll pick 6 comments at random from all the comments on this site, including ones to this post.
• Each person will get, for free, a signed copy of The Myths of Innovation mailed to their door.
• Any spammy (e.g. 15 posts with the same content) behavior will be disqualified.

Will lurkers suddenly be inspired to leave amazing thoughts in hopes of winning? Or will no one care and nothing will happen? There’s only one way to find out :)

Posted in Myths of Innovation | 28 Comments »

The folks at strategy+business have their ‘07 picks, and Myths of Innovation is listed as a best innovation book for 2007.

You can see their categories for all winners, but to read the actual reviews by Michael Schrage, Howard Rheingold, Tom Ehrenfeld and others, you need to register.

Posted in Myths of Innovation | 1 Comment »

In chapter 3 of The Myths of Innovation, I explore why innovation methedologies are prone to fail. It’s not their fault - there are many factors involved that are out of the control of any individual. You can do many things right and still fail.

There are dozens of challenges that must be overcome, but to be handy I distilled them down into 8 basics. This provides a handy checklist for evaluating why ideas die, why a start-up failed, or where the real tough spots are in making innovations happen.

1. Find an idea. Historically this is easy. Ideas are everywhere and anyone who can consider a problem for an hour can come up with possible ideas for solving it. Creativity is rarely the hardest challenge.
2. Develop a solution. The gap between an idea and a working prototype is HUGE. So what if you think something can be done, go and do it. Until you can show the manifestation of the idea, it’s still just an idea. Thousands of brilliant minds have conceived brilliant ideas, but failed, despite years of dedicated effort, to successfully prototype them.
3. Find a sponsor and funding. Even with a kick-ass prototype in hand you need resources to develop the prototype into a product. Whether an entrepreneur or a middle-manager, odds are good that to finish a prototype, or make a product out of it, you’ll need someone else’s approval. (Even if it’s your wife’s permission to spend nights working, a friend who will let you live in their basement, or a bartender willing to run you a tab).
4. Reproduction. Making one of something is not the same as making a thousand. I happen to have an amazing mousetrap: his name is Vincent and he’s my 15lb cat. But I can only sell one, as cloning him would cost $50,000 and that’s more than anyone would pay for a good mousetrap. Having an innovation and having an innovation than can be reproduced economically are not the same thing. Software is generally easy to reproduce, but many innovations are not. When it comes to the web, reproduction often means scale: can your server handle 50000 people using your innovation at the same time? This is a different technical skill set than creating the prototype.
5. Reach a customer. This is where the skill set required to make a successful innovation changes dramatically. OK. So you’ve overcome the first four challenges - but now the challenge has nothing to do with domain expertise, prototype brilliance, or even funding. Now someone has to inform potential customers that your innovation exists, persuade them to be interested, and convince them to pay money for it. Wow. What does this have to do with breakthrough thinking or a brilliant prototype? Very little. Those things help, but the challenge is now about persuasion, not creation. Up until this challenge, most innovators are deliberately hiding from the world in fear of idea theft, but now they have run in the opposite direction.
6. Beat competitors. Every idea has competitors. Even if you successfully reach customers, you won’t be the only one trying to reach them, and in the pursuit of customers things get ugly. Thomas Edison, in the war over electricity, tortured animals to convince the world his DC current was safer than Westinghouse’s AC (they were equally dangerous). How to position, advertise, make partnerships, sign deals and distribute a product is complex, unpredictable, and has little to do with the quality of the idea being sold.
7. Timing. This is the challenge that crushes innovators souls. A huge number of things can happen on any of your important days that a) decides your fate and b) you have no control over. Imagine what happened to all the start-up companies that announced their new product to the world on Sept 11, 2001. No one knows their names, and many of those companies did not have the resources to stage another launch. WWII had a huge impact on innovation: many ideas that weren’t war related were mothballed for years, including broadcast television in the USA. Timing impacts product launches, business deals, cost of goods, and dozens of other decisions innovations depend on.
8. Keep lights on. And of course, while you’re doing all of the above, someone has to pay the bills and keep whatever daily business there is running.

The book digs deeper into these challenges, and how succesful innovators overcame them, so if you dig this view take a look at the book, The Myths of Innovation.

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During research for the The Myths of Innovation I read tons of history books, particularly those trying to revise or debunk misnomers from the past. Books like a People’s history of the United States and Don’t know much about history, provided much guidance on how to tell true stories in the face of popular falsehoods.

With the big U.S. Holiday of Thanksgiving next week, here’s some fodder for fun dinner conversation:

• The success of the Mayflower settlement depended more on smallpox than the Pilgrims. Years before the Mayflower landed, Europeans had already brought smallpox to America, killing most of the indigenous population (An event the Pilgrims called “an act of god”). This made the early settlements possible, and forced the remaining natives (most notably Squanto) to consider cooperation with settlers, teaching them many survival skills. The Pilgrims stole corn and other supplies from natives during their first year.
• Half of the Pilgrims died in the first 5 months. They were untrained, unprepared, did not know how to farm or hunt in America, and chose a difficult location for their first settlement (they wandered off course crossing the Atlantic). By the time of the first thanksgiving those still alive were happy not to be dead - the fact that they had food to eat was more than worthy of celebration.
• The pilgrims did not eat turkey, mashed potatoes or pecan pie. Thanksgiving was not an official U.S. holiday until the 1860s, and we are celebrating the eating habits of people from the 1860s, not the 1600s. It’s not documented what was eaten on the first Thanksgiving, though it’s pretty certain they ate their meal with their hands.
• Thanksgiving is an ancient native concept, not Pilgrim or American. As you’d imagine, the folks who actually knew how to work with the land, the natives, had their own set of customs for giving thanks back to nature: some tribes had 6 festivals every year dedicated to giving thanks, only one of which we know as Thanksgiving.
• The Pilgrims were not Puritans. Both groups were radicals who wanted to escape persecution in England. But the Pilgrims were more egalitarian and tolerant - they had non-believers on the Mayflower, and even more in their settlement (they came over later). The Puritans wanted reform, but wanted the Church to change to reflect their views (whereas the Puritans abandoned the Church entirely). The Pilgrims were on the Mayflower, but the Puritans didn’t arrive in America until several decades later.
• The Indians and Pilgrims did not get along very well. Around the time of the first thanksgiving, The Plymouth settlement was converted into a fort, hardly an act of thanks or giving. As you’d imagine, the relationship between these two groups was complex, with different skirmishes and crimes by factions on both sides. While there were times of peace, tension grew over the years and led to King Phillip’s war, the end of any pretense of peace, a few decades later.

There certainly are some things to celebrate in the true story: the leadership and struggles of the settlement, some of the motivations of the Pilgrims themselves, and the acts of peace by parties on both sides, but these aren’t in the mythologized version most American’s know.

References:

• Top 10 Thanksgiving Myths
• The Myth of Thanksgiving
• The Mayflower: Courage, Community and War, Nathaniel Philbrick
• A People’s history of the United States, by Howard Zinn
• Don’t know much about history, By Kenneth C. Davis

Posted in Myths of Innovation, history | 2 Comments »

When doing talks about creative thinking and innovation, I often ask the crowd how they know what they know - How do we know Edison invented the lightbulb, or Newton got hit by an apple? By far and large the most common answer I get to that second question is Schoolhouse rock. Funny how we dismiss things by saying “it’s just for kids”, but what happens when those kids grow up?

Now I loved Schoolhouse rock as a kid, and it’s probably the only reason I know what a conjunction is. But in watching a local performance of the musical based on the tv show, I found some problems with the stories we’re telling.

• Newton did not get hit by an apple - at best he watched one fall in his grove decades before he completed his treatise on gravity (From the song Victim of Gravity).
• Robert Fulton didn’t invent the steamboat. He was, however, one of the first Americans to make a successful business of it, much like Edison and the light bulb. (From the song Mother Necessity)
• Galileo most likely did not perform the famous falling bodies experiment at Pisa (From the song Victim of Gravity).
• It’s disputed whether Franklin ever flew his famous kite, though he did have the idea (Electricity).
• Elias Howe did not build the first working sewing machine. He was the first American to do so, but that’s not the same thing. Same for Ford and the automobile. (From the song Mother Necessity).
• Betsy Ross may not have sewn the first U.S. flag, as most claims come from her relatives. (From the song Sufferage).

The story of Newton, and epiphany in general, is the subject of chapter 1 of the Myths of Innovation, so if you like this kind of stuff, check out the book.

Posted in Myths of Innovation, Teaching/Training | 2 Comments »

Amazon.com just posted their best 100 books of 2007. In the Business narrative category, Myths of Innovation shows up at #4.

On the full top 100, Myths slides in there at #99.

They don’t explain exactly how they chose their books, which editors were involved, or how they voted, but I’m not complaining. There is a separate list of 100 customer favorites for 2007 that I assume is purely based on sales.

Thanks to all you blog readers for your support - this kind of stuff doesn’t happen for me without your help spreading the word. Cheers.

Posted in Myths of Innovation | 5 Comments »

This is a question I’ve thought about often (See Google’s ten rules compared to Microsoft). Before I give my answer, if you’re in Seattle you should go listen to Lawrence Lessig give his talk on the subject Friday Nov 2nd at Kane Hall, at the University of Washington.

The short answer is No. In 1998 Microsoft was suffering from the shaky Windows 98 release, was facing a new DOJ lawsuit, and will still engaged in the browser-war with Netscape. I was in my 4th year at MSFT in ‘98, and it was the roughest year for the company I’d seen. The browser war was emotionally brutal, and on the Internet Explorer team we were trying to recover from IE4 (a release few of us were proud of). To outsiders, 1998 was a year of comeuppance for Microsoft.

Looking to next year I don’t see Google headed for seas quite so rocky. Yes, there are threats of major lawsuits with YouTube and search privacy, but those threaten future revenue sources more than current ones. However, like Microsoft in the 90s, the competitive landscape isn’t impressive. Yahoo and Microsoft have are still trailing players in tech-sector mind share.

Most important comparison: By 1998 Microsoft, the 23 year old company, had managed to piss off just about everyone at least once: at least it felt that way when I spoke at conferences. Google, only 8 years old, has a much higher standing in the industry, among competitors and partners, than Microsoft did. But then again, it’s 15 years younger :)

On culture and attitude: Life inside Google feels much like at Microsoft in the mid 1990s. I’ve been to Google several times (Chapter 1 of the Myths of Innovation recounts one visit) and know folks working there. The vibe feels incredibly familiar to my mid-90s MSFT memories: happy, smart, independent people who feel they are empowered to change the world, and who work in a special place, with special rules. And as best I can tell, it’s true. They deserve to feel that way. So in that respect, rock-on Googlers.

But the rub is that in the mid-1990s Microsofties felt the same way about their place in the industry, and their ability to change the world, as the folks at Google seem to today: We have the ball and we are running away with it. I suspect the folks at Atari in 1977 (year of the 2600), Apple in 1985 (and perhaps again now), Netscape in 1994 (year of Mosaic) and dozens of other companies that were once at the top of the world. And they were all prone to the same kinds of self-destructive hubris.

Common mistakes employees of dominant companies make:

1. Believing no one has been at the center of the tech-universe before.
2. Inability to take a non self-centric view of the world.
3. Depending on power and intimidation, more than intelligence and wisdom.
4. Failing to find ways to stay humble & hungry while being dominant.
5. Focusing more on beating rivals than satisfying customers.
6. Underestimating how decisions will be received by the rest of the world.

When I was at Microsoft (’94-’03), I always felt the company made things so much harder for itself in how employees, executives included, presented themselves to the world. I can’t tell you how many times I saw Microsoft employees embarrassing themselves at conferences, e-mail lists or on newsgroups. And it wasn’t entirely their fault: they were expressing the internal culture to the outside world and the result was predictably disastrous.

The perception of Google today, and in 2008, is at a tipping point. They are quickly rounding out their positions of dominance and the Microsoft comparisons will only get sharper. If they can learn the best lessons from Microsoft’s 1998, it’s about handling pressure with grace, and the wisdom to pay more than token attention to the mistakes above.

Posted in Innovation, Management, Myths of Innovation | 6 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 | 18 Comments »

This is a twist - as much as you’d think I should be interviewing him, Guy is a fan of the Myths of Innovation and interviewed me for his site.

Ten questions with Scott Berkun, by Guy Kawasaki.

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It’s still a mystery how amazon.com sets its pricing, but the Myths of Innovation is at an all time low at $14.99 (Lists at $25) - this is 40% off the cover price.

No idea how long it will last - they don’t tell the authors these things.

Posted in Myths of Innovation | 1 Comment »

Digital Web magazine has both a great review of The Myths of Innovation and a short, funny interview with yours truly about innovation, writing and more.

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