Today I’ve just finished reading** “The Myths of Innovation”** by Scott Berkun published by O’Reilly (2007). It’s in fact a slim book, less than 200  pages, but a perfect accompanying reading for an idle weekend. I flickered it through a long time ago and really wanted to get my teeth into it, but I never found the time. After having reading it, I can only say it is absolutely worth.

The Myths of Innovation explores the ideas and misconceptions who most of us have about how innovation happens. Maybe it’s nothing new (neither innovative ideas are always totally brand-new), but the approach of the book, giving many real examples and providing a quite extensive list of references and quotes, makes it very easy and enjoyable to read.

There are many ideas and concepts exposed all along the book, but if I had to pick three of them, three ideas I would like to get stuck into my mind and be never forgotten, I will pick these three:

Innovation is not a single process, there’s no spark of geniality, no magical moment. Innovation, in fact, is a long process which tends to rely on the sum of other previous little innovations, every step is important to nurture the final result which is what we tend to retain in our minds as the truly innovation. The invention of the television is a great example. What is more important, who got the idea of using wires to send images through; the person who suggested using cathodic tubes to render images; or the person who finally made the first TV set and successfully commercialized it. All of them played a key role in the invention of television, but as history is linear and therefore deceptive, we tend to praise those who fits the last piece.

The list of idea-killers

Regarding the process of bringing up new ideas (brain-storming most of the times), Berkun compiles a list of silly arguments, but in fact often heard during brain-stormings. The list made laugh as I could  recognized having heart many of them other times, or even tell them myself, concluding how much stupid human beings can be. Here is the list:

  • We tried that already.
  • We’ve never done that before.
  • We don’t do it that way here.
  • That never works.
  • Not in our budget.
  • Not an interesting problem.
  • We don’t have time.
  • Executives will never go for it.
  • It’s out of scope.
  • People won’t like it.
  • It won’t make enough money.
  • How stupid are you?
  • You’re smarter with your mouth shut.

Refrain to say any of this in your next brain-storming meeting. If nothing controversial, weird, or embarrassing is said in a brainstorming session, you can tell the brainstorming is not working.

Good is not the enemy of the best

“Good is the enemy of the best”, Voltaire. When I heard it the first time, I though it was a very clever and insightful quote. I believed in the idea that good-enough software was in fact a lame excuse for not doing excellent software, but I may change my perspective after reading what Burken thinks about the statement above. Berkun explains how concepts like the hypertext, object-oriented languages or user interfaces were already invented in the 60 and 70 but didn’t go mainstream, and by hence they were not successful till much years later. In the case of hypertext, Ted Nelson is well-known for openly criticizing the web as it’s today, something he considers much inferior to his original idea of what the web should be. Although Sir Tim Berners Lee may have dropped many of his ideas on his way to implement the first version of the web (HTML, HTTP,  first web server and first limited browser), perhaps he would have never make it if he hadn’t discarded or ignored many of Nelson’s ideas (not on purpose, but driven by the fact of events). Having not doing so, perhaps he had also failed. One of the strongest points of Berners-Lee was focusing really on the things he wanted to solve. He might foresee the upcoming importance of digital media on the web (specially images at that time) but he preferred to just focus on text instead, hence simplifying the problem he was trying to solve. You don’t need to make a product perfect before releasing the first time.

It’s a powerful idea in fact. Apple does this all time, and quite well in my opinion. Under the mantra “focus in the user experience”, many Apple products lack features which would be very easy to implement. I’m thinking of Apple TV for instance (not a very successful product, but illustrates quite well what I mean). When I tried Apple TV the first time I loved it, but as I played with it I asked myself “Why they haven’t include this and that, it would be very easy to do”. My friend responded me: “Yes, maybe they could, but that will make it more difficult to use for the average user” (heighten the barrier of penetration). Linux programs and commands are full of options and parameters which make them very powerful (and geeky), but more difficult to use as well. No wonder why Linux hasn’t yet conquered the desktop, and might never do, as most of the programmers who contribute and make the Linux operating system want powerful tools, not easy-to-use tools.

Other interesting ideas are: Don’t spend your whole time into one single thing, innovating involves hard-working but also being idle. Exploring other fields can help you to apply old concepts from other areas of knowledge to areas where they are new (examples of this are the birth of the spreadsheet, or Google’s search engine); How innovate ideas need time to be nurtured and explored, don’t pick one idea to focus in the beginning, but rather pick several simultaneously and see where they bring you; Defining a problem is 90% of the work of defining a solution (with a great example of the Palm Pilot); Exploring and finding a solution can lead to new interesting paths and finally change the goal of the problem your were trying to solve (as in the birth of Flickr, initially though as a complementary software for a video-game); Life is a zero-sum game, and the resources for innovation must come at the expense of something else.