Scott Berkun

One-line: Author and speaker on creativity, innovation, and management; wrote The Myths of Innovation.

What we know

• Author of The Myths of Innovation (2007), a debunking of the romantic story of how ideas get made — the epiphany, the lone genius, the magic moment — in favor of innovation as long sequences of ordinary, unglamorous work.
• Ex-Microsoft: worked on Internet Explorer and other products, shipping a new version “every three or four months,” before quitting in 2003 to write books.
• Frames himself as “an Occam’s razor kind of guy” — arguing the real barriers to innovation are simple cultural things we overlook (lack of trust, risk-aversion, obsession with epiphany), not missing budgets or gadgets. See Occam’s Razor.
• Popularized/relayed the practitioner canon around Brainstorming: recovering Alex Osborn’s original fact/idea/solution method against the “abused and bastardized” modern usage.

Mentioned in

• The Myths of Innovation — author; read by Kyle in 2014.

Open questions

• His other books (e.g., Making Things Happen, Confessions of a Public Speaker) are not yet in the wiki.

From “Things To Internet”

• scottberkun.com — his website and blog. Saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Things To Internet” (c. 2014), as “Read about Scott Berkun and go see scottberkun.com”.