The Myths of Innovation | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Berkun
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 19070
Format: Illustrated
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0596527055
Dewey Decimal Number: 609
EAN: 9780596527051
ASIN: 0596527055
Publication Date: May 15, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
| Scott Berkun Discusses Innovation at Amazon.com Headquarters | | Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation and The Art of Project Management, visited Amazon.com to discuss "epiphany myths" and the realities--and effort--of implementing innovation in your own life and work. Watch the video: - High bandwidth
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Praise for The Myths of Innovation:
"…Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation."
--Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University; author of Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things
"The naked truth about innovation is ugly, funny, and eye-opening, but it sure isn't what most of us have come to believe. With this book, Berkun sets us free to try to change the world unencumbered with misconceptions about how innovation happens."
--Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start
"This book cuts through the hype, analyzes what is essential, and more importantly, what is not. You will leave with a thorough understanding of what really drives innovation."
-- Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com |  |
Product Description
How do you know whether a hot technology will succeed or fail? Or where the next big idea will come from? The best answers come not from the popular myths we tell about innovation, but instead from time-tested truths that explain how we've made it this far. This book shows the way. In The Myths of Innovation, bestselling author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at innovation history, including the software and Internet Age, to reveal how ideas truly become successful innovations-truths that people can apply to today's challenges. Using dozens of examples from the history of technology, business, and the arts, you'll learn how to convert the knowledge you have into ideas that can change the world. Why all innovation is a collaborative process How innovation depends on persuasion Why problems are more important than solutions How the good innovation is the enemy of the great Why the biggest challenge is knowing when it's good enough "For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong." -- Scott Berkun, from the text. "Insightful, inspiring, evocative, and just plain fun to read it's totally great." -- John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox, andDirector, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARe; current Chief of Confusion "Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation." -- Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University; author of Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things "The naked truth about innovation is ugly, funny, and eye-opening, but it sure isn't what most of us have come to believe. With this book, Berkun sets us free to try to change the world unencumbered with misconceptions about how innovation happens." -- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start "Brimming with insights and historical examples, Berkun's book not only debunks widely held myths about innovation but also points the ways toward making your new ideas stick. Even in today's ultra-busy commercial world, reading this book will be time well spent." -- Tom Kelley, GM, IDEO; author of The Ten Faces of Innovation "This book cuts through the hype, analyzes what is essential, and more importantly, what is not. You will leave with a thorough understanding of what really drives innovation." -- Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com "I loved this book. It's an easy-to-read playbook for anyone wanting to lead and manage positive change in their business." -- Frank McDermott, Marketing Manager, EMI Music Scott Berkun knows innovation. A member of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999, he is a full-time author at www.scottberkun.com and wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management (O'Reilly). He also teaches creative thinking at the University of Washington.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
 Disappointing June 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is not all that. Its just a bunch of meandering ramblings from a guy whose main qualification seems to be that he worked on Internet Explorer at Microsoft. It creates just as many rah rah myths as it challenges. It is poorly written, the author is wholly devoid of any gravitas, and thus does not offer many coherent or believable insights. I suppose the bibliography is useful, for finding a real book, which this one is not.
 Excellent book for people working to innovate, and even for those curious or unsure about what innovation means or how to do it June 18, 2008
I recommend Scott Berkun's book The Myths of Innovation to everyone willing to trade a couple hours of reading and thinking for a deeper understanding of what's holding you back in your creative endeavours, and some alternatives to help you get out of your rut.
In Myths Scott lists 10 myths, one per chapter, which hamper people from innovating. His chapters begin by explaining some important things we've been lead to believe about inventing and innovation simply by living in our culture (U.S.A.). Those myths conspire to disempower people who do want to change things: a theme that repeats as Scott examines each myth in turn. After describing these implicit, limiting, and usually deeply ingrained memes Scott gives different perspectives for each myth including tales about popular people and inventions that may surprise you.
At first glance the chapters seemed more management-centric than I'd expected. However unless you are inventing in isolation (which cannot happen: see Chapter 5) and never need interact with other people, each of Scott's insights could be important to you, too. After all innovation doesn't just mean coming up with a patentable object to sell: any change to how people work, play, or view the world can be innovative and have similar challenges.
This was a great book for me since I've had hundreds of ideas of things to fix or create, but I hadn't realized how many damaging cultural myths about innovation I had accepted over the years. Even though Scott's writing and examples make the book easily readable and it is small enough to finish in a few hours, I took several breaks while devouring Myths and reread parts so I could absorb all the new information presented.
The Myths of Innovationis a fairly short book, but with Scott's writing that means it is packed with interesting content and clearly explains both myths and truths about innovation. Scott's ideas and the book's layout, black-and-white photos and illustrations, and extras like a colophon, ranked bibliography, and a useful index mean it is easy to reference, inviting to reread, and a springboard to free your own innovation.
Enjoy!
 I'm a Scott Berkun fan, but this one didn't do it for me. June 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really liked Art of Project Management so had high expectation for this book. It took me a while to get engaged into this one, and while there are lots of interesting tidbits, I really didn't find something that sticks to my ribs. Filling, but not satisfying.
Simple, straight and to the point June 9, 2008
What I liked about this book is its simplicity, and the organized way of presenting ideas. This book contains a lot of information about what is wrong about innovation, as well as the right way to do things.
If you like to think "out of the box", and find solutions out of the norm, this book is definitely for you...
 nice distracted summary May 19, 2008
We have a tendency to consider innovation to consist of divine inspiration to a humble few. Berkun demonstrates that this makes good stories, but it is far from the truth. Many innovations did appear in a sudden burst...after a decade of work in that direction. I particularly like the section where he discusses better framing of the problem can be more important than the solution.
I really want to give this book 3.5 stars, mainly due to the constant appearance of off-topic footnotes. Sometimes they have information, sometimes a story, sometimes a reference. It really kills my train of thought to skip around like that; maybe he's trying to make reading like web surfing. But perhaps that was done to keep the book short and sweet; there are interesting side thoughts, but he doesn't explore them all.
Also, the book has a weighted bibliography, which I've never seen before.
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