The Secrets of Innovation

Secrets of Innovation

Observations by Scott Berkun, author and innovator

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.

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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

Innovation- Ask Question

Step 1 : Ask Questions

Scott Berkun’s first step in innovation

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

Innovation-Try Things your self

Step 2 :Try Things Yourself

Scott Berkun’s second step in innovation

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.

Innovation- Attempt, Learn, Attempt Again

Step 3 :Attempt, Learn, Attempt Again

Scott Berkun’s third step in innovation

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.

Work and Sleep

Work And Sleep
September 25 2007 - Research from the University of Pennsylvania published in SLEEP has found that work time is the largest influence on how long an individual sleeps on both work and leisure days. The more hours worked the less sleep achieved.

Dr Mathias Basner analyzed a telephone survey of 47 731 respondents between 2003 and 2005 to the American Time Use Survey (a continuous study sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau). The survey asked people how they had spent their time in the 24 hours up to 4.00am on the day interviewed.

Analysis revealed that the majority of waking activities were inversely related to sleep time. Compared to the average sleeper, respondents who slept up to 4.5 hours worked an average of 93 minutes more on weekdays and 118 minutes more on weekends and those who slept a minimum of 11.5 hours worked an average of 143 minutes less on weekdays and 71 minutes less on weekends. The report highlights expert recommendations that adults get seven-to-eight hours of sleep a night.

Mathias Basner said:

"These cross-sectional results in a nationally representative sample suggest that compensated work time is the most potent determinant of sleep time, in which case work time should be considered an important factor when evaluating the relationship between sleep time and morbidity and mortality."

Another key finding was that travel time (including commute to work) on both weekdays and weekends unexpectedly proved to be the second most significant factor after work time. The author suggests further research is indicated into how sleep time is affected by earlier starts and/or later returns as people travel longer distances or cope with inadequate transport infrastructure and traffic congestion. In addition little is known about the impact of non-commute travel on sleep time.

The study found that there was a moderate relationship between short sleep and time spent on socializing, relaxing and leisure. Respondents in this category also spent more time on education and household activities and those with very short sleep times spent more time watching TV. Waking activities decreased with increasing sleep time with the exception of watching TV.

The study found little difference between work and non-work days except that compared to respondents with average sleep times, short sleepers spent less time watching TV on weekends, and long sleepers spent less time on socializing, relaxing and leisure activities. The balance between sleep time and waking activities was influenced by age and gender. Work time was maximal for respondents aged 45-54 years; sleep time increased for younger and older age groups.

Working Life

Working Life Under Labour

A recent report from The Work Foundation suggests that the Labour government merits "7 out of 10" for its impact on working life during the last 10 years. Authors Ian Brinkley, David Coats and Stephen Overell award this score for the government's "central achievement" in maintaining economic performance and low unemployment, while introducing reforms to secure greater justice in the workplace.

The report argues that while more action is needed especially in respect of enforcement of employee rights and to improve the quality of working life the environment is much improved. Some of the more pessimistic predictions about the future of work made in the 1990s have not come about. Less secure forms of employment (e.g. temporary, part-time) were increasing at that time. However, three-quarters of the 2.9 million jobs created between 1999 and 2006 were permanent and full-time. The current employment rate of 74.5 per cent is comparable to the highest ever achieved (76 per cent in the mid 1970s).

Specific improvements cited by the report include:

The National Minimum Wage introduced in April 1999 at an adult rate of only £3.60, it is now one of the highest in the world (and will increase to £5.52 in October 2007). Affecting about one million workers, 68 per cent of them women, it has "reduced the extent of low pay and improved the relative position of the working poor".
Flexible working, work-life balance and families: the availability of flexible working has increased significantly. The right to request this of employers was introduced in 2003. There has been an extension of maternity leave entitlements and paternity leave was introduced in April 2003. However, the authors highlight evidence of unmet demand, and compare greater availability in other European countries.
Working Time of more than 48 hours a week has declined, partly a result of the implementation of the Working Time Directive in 1998. This measure also introduced a minimum four week's paid leave to full-time workers (2.5 million saw an increase in their entitlement).
Trade unions: The Employment Relations Act 1999 introduced a statutory procedure for gaining recognition for collective bargaining, but trade union membership has not increased over the period.
The report also considers changes in work less directly influenced by political reform. For example, the trend towards decreasing job satisfaction appears to have been stemmed. However, the report describes the "bad jobs problem" - more monotonous, repetitive jobs than comparable economies, combined with workers' low sense of autonomy and control - as "the UK's most significant challenge" for the future.

David Coats, associate director of policy at The Work Foundation said:

"Work is one area of policy where Tony Blair's administrations have not only been extremely active over the last decade, but in which that activity has been for the better. The government has legislated to give workers a means of redress against some of the excesses of flexible labour markets - often in the face of resistance from employers - while simultaneously maintaining the dynamism of the economy.

"It is true that there is a legitimate concern about how well these rights are being enforced - especially among vulnerable groups of workers - and there may be a case for some further amendments to the law. Nevertheless, now the era of re-regulating the relationship between employers and employees appears to be at an end, Labour's workplace reforms can be seen not only as an ethical step forward, but perhaps also as a contribution to closing the productivity gap with other major economies as more employers are encouraged to abandon low-pay, low-skill, low-productivity business models."

Recruitment

Recruitment Practices
A recent survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp - formerly HRI) in conjunction with HR.com has found that 75 per cent of 180 organizations responding either use or plan to use psychological assessment for executive selection and development. Over half (58.3 per cent) currently use such methods, a further 16.7 per cent are considering their implementation.

The survey also found that assessments are used most commonly for selection and development (66.4 per cent), and 51.8 per cent of organizations assess candidates for virtually all senior positions. More than half (52.2 per cent) utilize external psychologists to administer assessments, and almost all employ a mixture of tests and interviews (64.4 per cent) and/or comprehensive assessment centers (43.5 per cent).

Jay Jamrog, senior vice president, research at i4cp said:

"Organizations are placing an increased focus on the development and selection of key talent. Accurately identifying high-performing leaders is critically important when it comes to managing through change in an increasingly competitive global environment. The results of this survey clearly show that organizations are recognizing the demands placed on executives and are using the right tools to assess a leader's abilities to withstand the pressures of high-level jobs."