Archive for the ‘Myths of Innovation’ Category

  • By Scott Berkun on April 2nd, 2008
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  • Myths of Innovation

CMU Lecture now on YouTube

Thanks to John Przyborski and Carrie Chisholm at CMU, last week’s lecture was videotaped and is now online at youtube.

This version of the talk is quite different from the version I did at Google almost a year ago, so it might be worth a spin even if you’ve seen that one before.

If you feel claustrophobic watching videos inside my site, here is the direct link to this video on youtube.

New essay: how to innovate right now

One question I hear often is “what can I do right now?”. Well, it turns out there are lots of things to do if you want to become an innovator, and in many cases it’s not very hard.

Check it out:

Essay #58 – How to innovate right now.

(Note: This essay was commissioned by the U.S. State department).

  • By Scott Berkun on March 11th, 2008
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  • Myths of Innovation

Corrections wanted for paperback edition of Myths of Innovation

The paperback edition of Myths of Innovation is underway. Now is a great time to let me know of any typos, mistakes, oversights, factual errors, or anything else that should be cleaned up.

The current list of typos, research issues and corrections can be found at www.mythsofinnovation.com.

If you give me a typo or correction I don’t yet know about, I’ll send you a signed copy of the paperback edition when it’s out.

Please take a peek at the existing list before leaving a comment or sending a correction in – thanks!

Interviewed by IdeaConnection

The folks at IdeaConnection interviewed me about Innovation mythology, the rate of change, and how progress happens. The book’s been out for six months, but there were some fun questions here I hadn’t heard before. Here’s an excerpt:

VB: One myth you talk about is the one that says today’s technologies are a logical and foregone conclusion of our past. Do you think the potential existed in the past, for our present to be a very different place? If so, could you speculate in what ways and why?

Scott Berkun:
If we believe that we have free will, and that we have the power to make choices in the present, then we have to believe people 20 or 100 years ago had the same freedom to make choices. We could have had steam powered cars: the first trains and automobiles were in fact steam powered. Many U.S. cities regret pulling out their networks of downtown cable cars, as now it’s prohibitively expensive to retrofit cities with much needed public transportation. The rise of both Microsoft and Google depended heavily on the mistakes of their early competitors and predecessors. Had Xerox, Palo Alto Research Centre, Atari, IBM, or AltaVista made one or two different decisions; we’d have a very different world.

You can read the full interview here.

  • By Scott Berkun on February 4th, 2008
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  • Myths of Innovation

Live webchat w/me tommorow, 12pm EST tommorow

Tomorrow at 12pm EST I’ll be live on america.gov, answering any and all questions. Hope to see you there.

New York Times on Myths of Innovation

As part of her Sunday business column on ideas, Janet Rae-Dupree quotes both me and the book a few times in Eureka: it really takes years of hard work.

Scott's Bestselling Books
  • Confessions of a
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  • The Myths of Innovation
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  • Making Things Happen
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