The gift of Innovation (photo)

Timothy Meaney, CEO of Kindling, a collaboration tool used by Symantec, Motley Fool, Nordstrom and Credit Suisse, sent out copies of The Myths of Innovation to some of their favorite customers.

He kindly sent me a photo, which I promised to post here.

Should you be inspired to do something similar with one of my books for your clients, friends or armies of creatives under your employment,  and give me an interesting picture, I’d be thrilled to post about it here too.

 

Amazing list of what people want me to write

At the book launch party  for Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds last month, Much fun took place.

(Photos by Shawn Murphy)

I set up a big wall upstairs in the back where people could write topics they wanted me to see me write about.

Wow.

It took up three huge sheets of paper, and some folks drew pictures, diagrams and other creative ways to express their suggestions.

Here’s the list. Some silly, some serious, some both:

  • The history of the London Underground
  • The history of the Velvet Underground
  • The history of Velvet Curtains
  • How to beat the house in Vegas
  • Does philanthropy work for today’s generation?
  • Does philosophy work for today’s generation?
  • How to write a book about public speaking
  • How to speak publicly about writing a book
  • How to freelance as a subject matter expert
  • What is the most important topic today? Why?
  • Why does Steven Gerraud matter so much?
  • What does fear hinder within us?
  • How do you not keep up with Jones’ and not care?
  • How to keep focus in a world that does not stop
  • How to best disseminate and grow a disruptive business idea in an organization averse to change?
  • How to avoid cynicism in a system determined to create and maintain it
  • Write about me! I’m fascinating (But you’re not that bright – you didn’t say who you were).
  • Why bacon is the only thing a man (or woman) really needs to survive. (Why bacon goes so well with everything)
  • The nature of friendship in the era of Facebook
  • Romance in the middle ages
  • Extend “Complexifiers vs. Simplifiers”  - does this map to englebart/Kay or Jobs/Gates? @strayideas
  • Resourceful or smart?
  • Should we privilege content creators as a potent segment and work to prefer their favor vs. consumers of content & passive commenters? – Andy
  • How to fix the floating plastic garbage in the pacific
  • Technology as a way to reduce consumerism?
  • Balance of intuition vs. data/tangible in our human experience and how that translates to business/culture.
  • Non-profits.
  • Should we focus on removing waste or adding new net value? – Andy
  • How the future depends on our rejection of four ideas: competition, scarcity, individualism, and the endless pursuit of more.
  • The randomness and influence of the general media
  • I want to read the novel. Finish it!
  • Crowd-sourced, real-time digital social media in the streaming cloud!! OMGR0X0RZ!!!
  • Ten years from now, why will authors need publishes? What’s their value add?
  • Life after Facebook, Google+, Twitter, 4square.
  • Writing about writing a book about writing a book.
  • How to create and share with audio in ways similar to the way people share through photos and writing today.
  • How to win at everything
  • How to make a living traveling in other countries (South America)
  • Learn about a write about a random subject each of a month
  • Why the world NEEDS EUGENICS!
  • How to recover after a terminal failure.
  • A day in the life of MS – before and or after .com
  • What should we do about the media in this country. Where should we look for reliable insight into public topics. Who should we trust. *Is it more important to fix the media or our political system?*
  • I’m originally from L.A. and have experienced the Seattle freeze. What’s up with that?!?
  • Courage
  • As everything gets more digital, will our children miss that we left behind fewer keepsakes?
  • Monkeys!
  • Monkeycats
  • What does Occupy Wall street look like 100 years from now. Is it a new sub-culture / political party? Something else?
Have something to add? Leave a comment.

Quote of the day

No introduction necessary:

We believe life is a constant series of small decisions that most of us leave up to someone else to decide. By taking charge of those decisions yourself – even the smallest ones – you can change your life from mundane to magnificent.

From the Married with Luggage blog (A 40 something couple sold everything and travels the world)

The secret life of blurbs

Blurbs, the quotes from famous people that appear on books, are curious things. They’ve been around forever, and show no sign of going away.

Most people assume these arrive through magic. Since they appear prominently on every book in the bookstore, its easy to forget there is work required to make them happen.

The work involved goes something like this:

  1. Publishers and authors want to sell books
  2. Endorsements from famous people, in theory, help sell books
  3. To get a blurb, authors reach out to everyone famous they know
  4. They ask for a blurb or an endorsement, based on a draft of the book
  5. Some of those people agree to look at it, many decline or don’t respond
  6. Some of the people who agree, actually look at the book
  7. Of those people, some offer a blurb, many decline here too
  8. Of those that offer a blurb, some are good enough to use

It’s a long, nag-filled process. Reading a book takes time, as does writing a short quotable summation of it. As is often the case in writing, there are many more rejections than approvals.

My first 3 books have many great blurbs from famous people, and I’m grateful for them. But for such a small piece of copy, people have very strong opinions about what they do or do not imply.

Some famous people never give blurbs (I know because I’ve asked them, and they told me). Other famous people love to blurb as many things as they can (It’d be interesting for someone with google-fu to see which famous people give the most blurbs).  There is definite evidence some people give blurbs without even skimming the book (quid-pro-quo blurbing is not uncommon), whereas others insist on reading the entire thing before considering anything.

I’ve been asked about the singular blurb for my new book, Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds. It’s unusual because unlike every other blurb I’ve seen, I, the author, wrote it myself.

This is unusual. I hope you find it amusing, or at least clever. Here’s why I did it:

  1. Most blurbs sound the same. I figured a more interesting and honest blurb may earn more attention than a famous person you don’t really know saying “I love this. It was better than Cats” or “Amazing read” or another thing much like what others have said about other books.
  2. As a self-published book, I’d rather invest time in making the book awesome. If I could skip the laborious and unavoidable steps listed above for hunting blurbs, I could focus more energy on making the book itself worthy of attention. Was it a mistake? I’m not sure.
  3. Given a chance, people can evaluate things themselves.  I decided to give 1/3rd of the book away, for free, as a Preview (PDF). I think most people know how to skim a book and decide if it’s interesting or not, all on their own.

Did I make a mistake? Do blurbs make a big difference in your book purchasing decisions? If not, what does?

If you want to know more about my self-publishing experience, read this.

Mindfire Day: the summary

You folks are awesome.

I know it’s annoying to keep getting asked to tweet, and post, and dance, in the name of some thing made by someone else. I know you have many other things to do.  And I’m grateful to every single one of you who helped out today.

I promised a summary, and here it is.

The summary:

I promised prizes and I will gladly give them out – tomorrow :)

Of course its never too late – if you forgot, the book is still new and every bit of PR helps. All of the specific and easy to follow tasks listed here are always welcome and have value.

Thanks again. More soon.

Sorry if you lost a comment

Due to some unintentional shenanigans on my part, comments were not working here for most of the day. I’m sorry. Thanks to some help from Mike Adams, a developer on my team at WordPress.com, all is now repaired.

 

Do crazy innovations affect serious subjects?

Kestutis Gardziulis, one of my kickstarter supporters for Mindfire, asked this question:

How do “crazy” innovations affect serious subjects?

Often crazy ideas in innovation history are described as accidental inventions. Things like how Nutrisweet was discovered when a chemist accidentally licked his fingers, or that Post-It notes were invented out of bad glue. These stories are told as if it were all an accident that could happen to anyone. Most people find  stories told this way charming, which is why they’re so popular.

The better way to consider these stories (for anyone serious about creativity) is the people involved were  a) paying attention b) working hard.

Any idea, no mater how crazy, silly, or ‘bad’, can be reused in surprising ways, provided a and b are true.

In the cases of both Nutrisweet and Post-It notes, the inventors were not slackers. The only reason they had a chance to make these ‘accidental’ discoveries is that they were in a place of work, and were working. They were not on a beach reading Stephen King novels, nor in their parent’s basement playing XBOX all day (although I do admit, it is also possible to discover ideas in these activities too).  The ‘accident’ happened while they were working.

But the most profound thing is that when something crazy happened, they paid attention. They didn’t throw the idea away as most of us would. Instead that asked: “this is weird… how does it work? and what might it be good for?” And set about working hard to find out what the weird or crazy accidental idea might be used for in the world, in some cases, abandoning the initial project that led to the discovery of the crazy thing in the first place.

In another way, crazy ideas that are invented as jokes or as playthings, can also become serious. Silly inventions like Hoola Hoops are now a form of exercise. A similar story is true about the poles used in adult strip clubs. Take a crazy idea from one domain, and bring it into another, and it may become something very serious indeed.

Creativity can simply be seeing a new way to use an old thing, or having the insight and courage to borrow an idea from one domain, or designed for one purpose, and apply it to another.

What stories do you know of, of an idea from one field being reused in another? Please share in the comments.

 

When is it time to quit a job to follow a dream?

Andrew Rosen of Jobacle, one of my kickstarter supporters for Mindfire, had this request for a blog post:

How do you know it is time to quit your job and put yourself into a project you believe in on a full-time basis (head and heart)?

I try to live life backwards. It’s a cliché, but many cliché’s are cliché’s because they have some truth in them. I do periodically imagine myself on my deathbed looking back. What do I want to see?

When I do that, answers to questions like this are easy. The time is now.

Many people spend their entire lives with a dream they keep in their back pocket, expecting there to be a day with no distractions or conflicting priorities. In that fantasy, there is a day that will come, on its own, when following a dream will be the easiest choice in the world to make, and everyone, and everything in the universe will point towards the dream. That day never happens. That day has probably never happened for anyone. You have to make that day happen for yourself, often in spite of some reasonable advice to the contrary.

Most people reading this post live comfortable lives. No matter what choice you make, you will live a reasonably comfortable life, historically speaking. Review Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – no matter what you do, you’ll likely be ok. You have the power to take a big risk or two over the course of a lifetime and survive, or possibly thrive. But never taking a chance? Never making sacrifices to find out what’s behind that dream or what’s on the other side of that fantasy? Over the long view of a lifetime, that approach makes little sense.

If you want specific plans for how to quit, see: Should I quit my job now.

Can you thrive on a sinking ship?

Josh, one of my kickstarter supporters for my Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds, asked this question.

My place of employment is closing. The problem is the mood is very somber and depressing. How do you work within that environment and not let it bring you down?

If you stand back, way, way back, the entire solar system is a sinking ship. We know the sun has just a few billion years left, and if we’re still stuck on planet earth, we’ll go up in flames with the rest.

Meanwhile, can we thrive here? Of course we can.

Whenever I hear of a group in trouble, or a project not going well, I think of the earth and the sun. If you frame a problem right, you can thrive anywhere. Even Sisyphus himself, according to Camus, had moments of joy here and there. I admit you can’t always thrive in terms of productivity, but you can thrive in spirit.

First, its when times are tough that leaders earn their pay. It’s easy to lead when everything goes perfectly. In some cases, a leader might be doing nothing at all, and ride on the waves of producvtity driven by the people who work for them. But when things go wrong, or there’s bad news, or the sun starts exploding, that’s when a leader earns their pay.

What goals can be set that people find interesting? What skills can people learn before the project is over? What sources of pride can be cultivated and directed at the remaining work? There are always ways to make the boring interesting, and the dull fun. It just requires someone who has authority to choose to use that authority to motivate and inspire.

I’m not suggesting denial. Everyone will process the end of a project or a company in their own way, on their own time. But for those who can find ways to stay motivated and excited about what they’re doing, they should be supported and encouraged to find ways to involve others.

Lets say there are 100 people on a project that’s ending. Everyone will be somber when it’s announced. But the following week, what if there are 5 people, working together, having fun, and being productive. The other 95 will start to notice, and many of them will want to join the 5, in spirit, if not in work. Not everyone will be capable of coming along, but you’d be surprised. If a key leader or two take up with the minority group, it can soon become much larger than people think.

At the end of the day we all face situations we can’t win and can’t control. The question then becomes: how will choose to face those situations? Like Sisyphus, choosing how to respond to what we can’t control might just be the most important and defining decision we ever make.

Today is Mindfire day: Details for how to help

To help spread word of the new book, I’m asking everyone I know to tweet, post or facebook about Mindfire.

The goal is to see how high we can get the amazon.com ranking to go. Its been hovering at around #11,000 since launch. Can we get it to 7000? 2000? Lets find out.

I’ll be tracking who helps (make sure to reference @berkun, www.scottberkun.com, or my name on Facebook), and giving away prizes like amazon.com gift certificates and signed copies of books.

To participate is easy. Do any of the following RIGHT NOW:

1. Tweet about Mindfire. Here’s a sample tweet you can use: “Great book – Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds -  fast, fun & provocative read on big ideas by @berkun http://amzn.to/mindfires #mindfire”

2. Post on Facebook.  “Great new book Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds, a fast, fun and provocative read on how you think, work and dream. A great gift for creatives, leaders and thinkers –  http://amzn.to/mindfires”.   (Tag me at Scott Berkun so I’ll see it).

3. Post on your blog.  You can reuse the samples above, and also mention the free preview of the book, which can be found here:  http://bit.ly/mindfirepreview.   Make sure to have a link to www.scottberkun.com so I can track it.

4.  Buy Mindfire as a gift, or for your team.  Any sales today would help enormously. If you can think of friends or co-workers who need a good read, it’s a win-win: http://amzn.to/mindfires. (Also, you can gift the kindle edition of the book – it’s on the same page).  You can simply tweet, FB or blog about the fact that you the bought the book.

5.  See who else you can get to do any of the above. 

Cheers for all the help!

In return, I have a stack of new posts I’ve been saving up, and you’ll see me posting and tweeting about them today.

 

 

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Scott's Bestselling Books
  • Confessions of a
    Public Speaker
  • Provocative and funny secrets from a veteran speaker, you'll laugh as you learn.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
  • The Myths of Innovation
  • The classic bestseller, now in paperback with 4 new chapters.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
  • Making Things Happen
  • The classic and bestselling handbook for any project leader, packed with tactics and stories.
  • Buy now at Amazon Book Details
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