Innovation is really not hard, says the
author of The Myth’s of Innovation, Scott
Berkun. You do not have to be a genius, a workaholic or
carry and advanced degree in engineering. You just have
to be able to create something new and useful.
The “new” part intimidates many
would-be-inventors, who think that in order to innovate
you have to introduce something the world has never seen
before. That hardly ever happens, argues Berkun. Practically
all great innovators borrowed and reused ideas from the
past. Their inspiration usually came from careful observations
how things already work: how birds fly, how “primitive”
artists see the world, how fuels burn.
All these seemingly simple observations
gave birth to powerful new inventions: the flying machines,
new painting styles, devices that power and light our world.
According to Berkun, the trick to innovation is to widen
your perspective on what qualifies as new. An innovative
idea should meet the needs that have not been met before,
open new applications.But idea is only the beginning of
the innovation. A successful innovation process, says Scott
Berkun, should include three main elements: asking questions,
experimenting, and self-reliance:
Scott Berkun is the author of the bestseller
The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly Media,
Inc., 2007). He writes about creative thinking and innovation
at http://www.scottberkun.com.
The following information is excerpted from
an article in the new January 2008 eJournal, The
Next New Thing.
(begin byliner)
Secrets of Innovation
By Scott Berkun
The biggest secret of innovation is that
anyone can do it. The reason is simple: It’s just
not that hard. Look up the word “innovate” in
any dictionary and see what it actually means, instead of
what you think it means. You’ll find something like
this: To innovate is “to introduce something new.”
That’s it. It doesn’t say to you need to be
a creative genius, a workaholic, or even have on clean underwear.
It’s just three little words: introduce something
new. And I promise that by the end of this essay, you’ll
have all the secrets needed to do it yourself.
The key word in the definition is “new.”
The common trap about newness is the assumption that new
means something the universe has never seen before. This
turns out to be the third most ridiculous assumption in
the history of mankind (you’ll have to figure out
the other two for yourself). Here’s proof: Name any
great innovator, and I guarantee they borrowed and reused
ideas from the past to make whatever it is they are famous
for.
The Wright brothers, the inventors of powered
flight in the United States, spent hours watching birds.
As boring as it seems, we have bird-watching to thank for
the supersonic jet planes we have today. Picasso’s
development of cubism, one of the great artistic movements
of the last two centuries, was heavily influenced by his
exposure to African painting styles, as well as the work
of an older French painter, Cezanne. And Thomas Edison did
not create the concept of powered light: You’d have
to talk to the thousands of people who died before Edison
was born who turned wood, wax, oil, and other fuels into
controllable and portable light sources (not to mention
Joseph Swan, who patented the electric light before Edison).
Even in today’s high-technology world
you can find easy connections between what we call “new”
and ideas from the past. The World Wide Web and the Internet
get their names from things thousands of years old. The
first webs were made by spiders, and the first nets were
used to catch fish by indigenous people around the world,
thousands of years before the first computer. Google, the
wonderful search tool, is often called a search engine,
in reference to concepts of physical mechanics, not digital
bits.
All these examples prove that the trick
to innovation is to widen your perspective on what qualifies
as new. As long as your idea, or your use of an existing
idea, is new to the person you are creating it for, or applies
an existing concept in a new way, you qualify as an innovator
from their point of view, and that’s all that matters.
Even with these improved definitions, it
takes more to make innovation happen. The tool kit of every
innovator typically includes three things: questions, experiments,
and self-reliance.
Step 1: Ask Questions
The easiest place to start is with things
you do every day. Simply ask: Who else does this, and how
do they do it differently?
If you only know one way to do something,
you’re making a big assumption. You’re betting
that of the infinite ways there are to do it, the single
one you know is the best. I’m a gambling man myself,
but I wouldn’t make that bet, as those odds, one against
infinity, are embarrassingly bad.
Even simple things like washing dishes or
tying shoelaces have dozens or hundreds of alternative approaches
in use by different people around the world. Those methods
are all potential innovations for you and everyone you know.
The problem is that someone has to go out of their way to
find those alternatives and bring them back.
Not sure how to start? It’s with more
questions. Useful questions for innovators include:
• Why is it done this way?
• Who started it and why?
• What alternatives did they consider,
and what idea did their new idea replace?
• What are my, or my friend’s,
biggest complaints with how we do this thing, and what changes
might make it better?
• How is this done in other towns,
countries, cultures, or eras of time?
• What different assumptions did they
make or constraints did they have?
• How can I apply any of the above
to what I do?
Many great innovators asked better questions
than everyone else, and that’s part of why they were
successful. It wasn’t genius, whatever that means,
special top-secret brain exercises they did every morning,
or even how much money they had. It was through the dedicated
pursuit of answers to simple questions that they found ideas
already in the world that might be of use.
Isaac Newton asked how could the force of
gravity affect apples as well as the moon? And by framing
the question that way, he made observations and developed
mathematics related to gravity, something no one else had
done to his level of satisfaction.
Many of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions
started with him asking the question: “How does water
flow?” It was his many studies of rivers, streams,
and the way water moved that led to his inventions for water-powered
wheels, ways to move water in aqueducts and canals, and
pumps for wells. Without asking questions and looking around,
even at obvious everyday things like water and gravity,
Newton’s and da Vinci’s creative talents would
never have had a chance to surface.
Step 2: Try Things Yourself
Asking questions is one thing, but trying
to answer them is another. There is no substitute for firsthand
experience when creating things. The unique aspects of who
you are, including qualities you may not like about yourself,
are an asset when it comes to creative thinking. No one
can see the world exactly the way that you do.
This means that if you can experience, watch,
or make something yourself, you may discover lessons and
make observations that other people failed to notice. Those
observations are the seeds of innovation: You might see
an old idea or tool in a way no one else in your family,
business, or city has before, and if you follow it, an innovation
might be yours.
Remember that the knowledge we have today
about the universe did not come from magic books that have
been sitting around waiting for us since the dawn of time.
It came from curious people who not only asked questions,
but followed them to places others weren’t willing
to go.
Francis Crick and James Watson, the discoverers
of DNA, followed hunches and made guesses to answer their
questions, spending hours in labs doing things their professors
thought were not only unscientific, but a giant waste of
time. Even Socrates, the greatest philosopher of the Western
world, was against the idea of writing things down in books.
Had his pupil Plato not picked up on the innovation known
as writing, and wrote down Socrates’s story himself,
we wouldn’t know either of their names, much less
the Socratic method for learning that many universities
base their teachings on today.
Progress depends on people thinking independently
and following their curiosity as far as they can, including
doing things others around them refuse to try.
Attempt, Learn, Attempt Again
The last step is not to expect success the
first time. If you’re doing something new for yourself
or your friends, it’s hard to predict what the outcome
will be. And the bigger the innovation the more risk --
and work -- there is: Making innovative cookies is one thing,
but changing the way people think or work is another.
Since long hours of work might be required
to satisfy your curiosity, what’s important is how
you respond to failure.
Can you find the courage to respond not
with embarrassment or regret, but with more questions:
• Why did this fail?
• What can I learn now?
• What will I do differently next
time?
If you can, like most great inventors and
creators throughout history did, you’ll be well on
your way.
(end byliner)
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