The Myths of Innovation

Key Takeaways

Read in 2014 with an eye toward puncturing the romance around how ideas actually get made — the marks and marginalia converge on a single argument: the epiphany is a myth, and the unglamorous work is the whole game.

Four threads recur across what got marked:

1. Insight is incubation, not lightning. The heaviest early highlighting is on idleness as productive — Freeman Dyson’s “people who keep themselves busy all the time are generally not creative,” the workaholic trick of using one project as a break from another, and da Vinci on staring at stains and clouds until patterns surface. The subconscious does the work; the “eureka” is just when it reaches the surface.

2. Creativity is associative range, and it looks like insanity. Simonton’s low-associative-barriers passage is marked through the joke that connecting distant ideas is “indistinguishable from various definitions of insanity” — the tightrope between strange and creative, and why innovators end up “lonely, misunderstood characters.”

3. Problem-finding beats problem-solving; execution beats epiphany. Einstein’s “19 days to define it,” Ted Hoff’s “keep working on things… follow through with it,” and the underlined “what matters is the ability to see a problem clearly, combined with the talent to solve it… as work.” Ideas are abstractions; manifesting them against political/financial/technical constraints “is something no theory or book or degree can ever grant you.”

4. Environment and trust gate everything. “Talent is only as good as the environment it’s in” is underlined; the trust passage (“only one of every three teams… has a culture of trust… without trust, ideas do not go anywhere”) is bracketed. Berkun’s craft frames — Osborn’s fact/idea/solution split, the brainstorming rules, the pitch-yourself questions — get pulled out as usable checklists.

The three handwritten margin notes turn the book’s frameworks into personal reference: “Disney’s 3 rooms” against Osborn’s fact/idea/solution finding, “Questions to ask yourself!” against the pitch-diligence list, and “Hustler / Hipster / Hacker” mapped onto Berkun’s three-rare-people taxonomy.

Connections

• The Idea Factory — the fullest counter-case to the epiphany myth: Bell Labs shows innovation as sustained institutional work over decades (Berkun even cites Bell inventing the telephone). Where Berkun debunks the lone flash, Gertner documents the machine that replaces it.
• The Lean Startup — the “beyond epiphany” chapter in practice. Ries’s build-measure-learn and proof-of-concept discipline is exactly Berkun’s point that ideas are cheap and execution is the rare, unglamorous work.
• Skunk Works — Kelly Johnson’s small trusted team and rules are the applied version of “talent is only as good as the environment it’s in” and the one-in-three-teams-has-trust passage.
• The Innovator’s Dilemma — the institutional “idea killers” from the other side: why incumbents structurally reject good ideas that don’t fit current budgets and scope.
• The Origins of Creativity — creativity as recombination of distant ideas; a naturalist’s frame on the same associative-ability thread Berkun draws from Simonton.
• Zero To One — instructive contrast: Thiel leans on the singular founder and the “secret,” where Berkun spends the book dismantling the lone-genius myth. Same subject, opposite emphasis.

Highlights

The best lesson from the myths of Newton and Archimedes is to work passionately but to take breaks. Sitting under trees and relaxing in baths lets the mind wander and frees the subconscious to do work on our behalf. Freeman Dyson, a world-class physicist and author, agrees: “I think it’s very important to be idle…people who keep themselves busy all the time are generally not creative. So I am not ashamed of being idle.”

Some workaholic innovators tweak this by working on multiple projects at the same time, effectively using work on one project as a break from the other. Edison, Darwin, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and van Gogh all regularly switched between different projects, occasionally in different fields, possibly accelerating an exchange of ideas and seeding their minds for new insights.

Stand still and watch the patterns, which by pure chance have been generated: Stains on the wall, or the ashes in a fireplace, or the clouds in the sky, or the gravel on the beach or other things. If you look at them carefully you might discover miraculous inventions.

[P]ersons with low associative barriers may think to connect ideas or concepts that have very little basis in past experience or that cannot easily be traced logically. Read that last sentence again: it’s indistinguishable from various definitions of insanity. The tightrope between being strange and being creative is too narrow to walk without occasionally landing on either side, explaining why so many great minds are lampooned as eccentrics. Their willingness to try seemingly illogical ideas or to make connections others struggle to see invariably leads to judgment (and perhaps giving some truth to stereotypes of mad scientists and unpredictable artists). Developing new ideas requires questions and approaches that most people won’t understand initially, which leaves many true innovators at risk of becoming lonely, misunderstood characters.

Ted Hoff, the inventor of the first microprocessor (Intel’s 4004), explained, “If you’re always waiting for that wonderful breakthrough, it’s probably never going to happen. Instead, what you have to do is keep working on things. If you find something that looks good, follow through with it.”

What matters is the ability to see a problem clearly, combined with the talent to solve it. Both of those tasks are generally defined, however unglamorously, as work.

Idea killers. These are phrases for thoughtless idea rejection. They’re used by people who are too lazy to give useful criticism or direction, who fail to ask idea-provoking response questions, or who dismiss others’ ideas believed to have the potential for good ideas. Phrases like “it’s not in our budget” or “we don’t have time” are half-truths, as budgets and schedules can be changed for a sufficiently good idea. Others are stale ones, such as “we’ve never done that before,” a condition of any new idea, good or bad.

• 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.

And, perhaps worse for creativity, as adults we aim for efficiency in our time, shortcutting through days, looking for fast tracks and power tools.

• Fact finding. The work of collecting data, information, and piles of research about whatever it is that needs to be done.
• Idea finding. The exploration of possibilities—free from as many constraints as possible—and using or ignoring facts as needed to find more ideas.
• Solution finding. The development of promising ideas into solutions that can be applied to the world.

Kyle: Disney’s 3 rooms.

Osborn researched which environments stimulated people’s creativity, and this study led to the following four idea-finding (aka brainstorming) rules:

1. Produce as many ideas as possible.
2. Produce ideas as wild as possible.
3. Build upon each other’s ideas.
4. Avoid passing judgment.

Designating a skilled facilitator keeps things flowing and fair, and ensures that the rules are followed and that the meeting runs only as long as needed.

The point is that anything can be used for things other than its intended purpose. We assume everything has one function, but that’s wrong: you can use anything for anything (although it might not work well, you can try).

Talent is only as good as the environment it’s in.

The best is the enemy of the good. —Voltaire

Einstein once said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it,” a gem of insight lost in the glory of what he achieved on that 20th day.

First, most teams don’t work. They don’t trust each other. They are not led in a way that creates a culture where people feel trust. Think of most of your peers—how many do you trust? How many would you trust with a special, dangerous, or brilliant idea? I’d say, based on my experiences at many organizations, only one of every three teams, in all of the universe, has a culture of trust. Without trust, there is no collaboration. Without trust, ideas do not go anywhere, even if someone finds the courage to mention them at all.

Ideas are abstractions. Executing and manifesting an idea in the world is something else entirely as there are constraints—political, financial, and technical—that the ideas we keep locked up in our minds never have to wrestle with. And this distinction is something no theory or book or degree can ever grant you.

• What problem does this solve?
• Whose problem is this? Is it important to them? Is there evidence they’d pay to have it solved?
• What are the toughest challenges implied by the idea? How will you solve each one?
• Do you have a prototype, sample, or demonstration (aka proof of concept)? Of the remaining work, what is hardest to do?
• Why are you the right person to solve this?
• Why should our organization give you money/support/time to work on this?

Kyle: Questions to ask yourself!

There are three kinds of people who are rare in this world:

• Those who are excellent communicators
• Those who find interesting and useful ideas
• Those who can convert an idea into a realistic plan

Kyle: Hustler / Hipster / Hacker.