UI13: Scott Berkun’s “The Myths of Innovation: How to Lead Breakthrough Projects”

On Day 3 of UI13, I attended a full-day session by Scott Berkun on “The Myths of Innovation: How to Lead Breakthrough Projects.”

Innovation is a word that gets thrown around the tech world haphazardly, so I was particularly interested to hear how Scott would legitimize the topic and discuss the ultimate value of forward-thinking. I had also heard from colleagues that Scott is a really engaging speaker so I was excited to see him go. I was definitely not disappointed.

My Twitter notes on the session are below:

• @briandigital is introducing Scott Berkun.
• “How many of you are morning people?” A few ppl raise their hands. “Kill them, please!”
• Scott giving a disclaimer that teaching large groups is hard so he may not get to all q’s. Send any question to [email protected]
• “I wander around a lot…so if you’re playing solitaire in the back I’ll probably see it.”
• Scott was program manager @ Microsoft working on Internet Explorer from 94-03. Had to figure out how to innovate on unpopular product
• We’re talking about what “innovative” means. Something that didn’t exist before it was created? Something that satisfies a need?
• Is Google innovative? It is in its simplicity. It solved a problem better that previous solutions. The algorithm was new.
• Is a Big Mac an innovation? Someone from audience said, “Special sauce”
• McDonalds was the first to think about food as a mechanical process. 12-piece item assembled in a uniform way across restaurants
• Is Coca-Cola Classic an innovation? Marketing innovation for soda. Pointing out the old as mktg advantage
• The failure of New Coke propelled Coca-Cola to go back and promote something old, an innovation
• The word innovation is used to mean something new that’s better. If you go back in history, everything was an innovation at some point
• “Chronocentrism” – the tendency for people to focus on the present.
• “Every successful innovation will be taken for granted…if you do a good job, no one will even notice it anymore” — Scott Berkun
• Definition of innovation: “The introduction of an idea that radically improves the results”

• All the greatest creators didn’t use the word innovation all that much.
• Doing research for Scott’s book on innovation, surveyed 150-200 “innovators” on what innovation means. 60% wrote in their own answer
• Asked same people who they thought the greatest innovator in history is. Steve Jobs? da Vinci? Thomas Edison? 53% wrote in their own
• Being good vs. being innovative. Innovation often a side-effect. Focus on solving a problem for customer, profiting from the solution
• Pick a very hard problem, innovation will be a by-product of solving it. McDonald’s, Google PageRank, Flickr didn’t aim to innovate
• What’s the process to get from idea to innovation? Idea > Pitch > Proof of Concept > Prototypes > Plans > Acceptance of Risk > …
• … Commitment > Execution > Innovation > Commodification
• Execution gets one bullet in this list, but it’s huge. Actually making stuff well is key
• Use this list as a diagnostic. Where do good new ideas die on your team?
• Scott has everyone in the room standing up and as he reads through the list ppl sit down where the process ended for their idea
• W the idea I chose to think about, I sat down at Execution. Got thru lots of steps, but even after everyone committed, wasn’t executed
• To innovate successfully requires: ability to generate ideas, ability to develop into solutions, comfort w risk/failure/uncertainty
• …willingness to be unpopular, political acumen, mrkt awareness, talent for persuasion, sensitivity to social/organizational dynamics
• …resources and patience
• Someone asked what the difference is between proof of concept & prototype. Scott says PoC can be a napkin sketch while prototype works

• Frederick Winslow Taylor was the first to assert that fast, better work rests on good management.
• “If the process you’re using prohibits the possibility of spurring innovation, you have a conflict” — Scott Berkun
• “There’s a natural tension between management and creation, invention and risk” — Scott Berkun
• Management born from conservation. Developed for factories/banks/railroads. Designs/makers require a different philosophy
• Creative lifecycle of a corporation: Entrepreneur (high risk) -> Corporation (low risk)
• Scott showing photo of Thomas Edison. He knew he was being photographed, he created the unhappy “Edison brand”
• He created the illusion that he was the manager and that all invention was created through him. It was actually the Menlo Park lab
• Story of the copy machine: guy who invented it couldn’t find anyone to fund it. Read more here
• You think your team dynamic is what’s stopping you from innovating? Go watch any documentary on a rockband.
• Innovation is about exploration. Mistakes are necessary. History biased towards a successful outcome. You must seek out better sources
• Management is a conservative discipline. Innovation is a relative priority
• Myths about creative thinking. The biggest myth is about epiphany, that it’s a singular moment of insight that just happens.
• Newton got hit with an apple in a split second, but then it took him 15 years to write the book that he is actually famous for
• And in any case, the apple story isn’t true. It’s apocryphal.
• We like the epiphany stories so much that the media tends to focus on them. But look @ Dyson’s story: took him thousands of prototypes

• To increase innovation: make team smaller, give it more authority, increase trust & cover fire, choose ppl who thrive in uncertainty..
• Choose ppl who perform well when their ideas are challenged, resist authority & the status quo
• Problem is not about creativity, it’s about lack of power. Need to be able to make all decisions that your skillset has purview over
• “The real value that managers have is not about their ability to come up w ideas. Their value is to provide protection” –Scott Berkun
• Ideal team size is 3-5 ppl. There’s something magical about that number for being able to manage a single conversation — Scott Berkun
• Audience Q: “How do I get my manager to leave the room?” Explain that your team needs more independence, room to grow, like a teenager
• Audience comment: work into the plan when the manager will leave the room and relinquish control to the team
• The manager has to believe in and trust the team, and set clear expectations with executives, and ultimately protect the team
• “The future looks weird in the present — you don’t know how this will have value now” — Scott Berkun
• Scott telling the story of Doug Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse
• How innov happens: all the clichés are true but most happens through committed work by experts, unexpected discovery followed by work
• …outsiders w ideas. Hard work, risk and luck required. Stories: Newton’s Apple, Teflon, Aspartame, Velcro
• Scott telling story of QUERTY keyboard, designed not to be most efficient for human, but instead for typewriter
• Scott recommends reading Founders at Work for more innovation stories from top companies
• Creative thinking is easy if you’re willing to be embarrassed. Creativity demands intimacy more than intellect or genius

• Rules from Improv comedy: Yes, and…; no half-assing; no apologies; make the other guy look good
• Take an improv comedy course to learn how to build on ideas and work as a team instead of discount ideas and prove your own genius :-P
• Don’t preface your idea by saying, “This is probably a really stupid idea, but…” You have to OWN it
• We’re having a blast and cracking up in this room doing 3 exercises. 1st, describe attributes of the perfect cell phone. Next…
• Describe the attributes of $10 cell phone. Then last, describe the attributes of the worst possible cell phone. We’re all calling out
• I called out “Every call is from my mom.” Sorry @loiswhitman :) I love you :)
• Scott says that doing the inverted question 1st (worst cell phone) is easier for people to feel comfortable doing cuz it’s kinda silly
• The worst ideas will spur your thinking about possible solutions to create the best ideas
• Challenge: best cell phone. Constraint: $10 cell phone. Inversion: worst cell phone. Hybrid: combining exercises t generate more ideas
• Growing a team is a slow process of accretion, “it’s more of a female process of nurturing” — Scott Berkun
• Defining roes. Hypothesis: any two people who work together will eventually disagree on who is responsible for what
• Explicitly defining roles in a creative situation is crucial. List what each person does, and then what they both do
• “Creative stuff is messier, sloppier, more ambiguous.” Definition is even more important
• Life of team: prestage, stage 1 forming, stage 2 storming, stage 3 norming, stage 4 performing, stage 5 performing, stage 6 adjourning
• This model created by Bruce Tuckman

• This is another way to diagnose the state of the team. Can help you identify and fix breakdowns that are preventing innovation
• Risks/fears: if my idea fails, I’m a failure; I’ll look like an idiot; uncertainty makes me uncomfortable; don’t want to reveal myself
• …I’m not sure that I’m right; they may laugh at me; my reputation may be ruined
• “In the tech sector, Luddite is an insult.” But they were actually ppl who worked on looms
• The Luddites were angry about change. Any pitch you make, there will always be someone in your organization who doesn’t want change
• Some ppl are afraid of new ideas. Identify who that is and figure out how to work around them
• Scott Berkun showing us this video
• Idea killers: we’ve tried that before; we’ve never done that before; that’s not how we do things here; how can you justify the costs?
• … How will this become profitable? Our existing customers will not like this. More on Scott’s blog
• Half the game is preparing for those idea killers. Certain flavors of these are throw around all the time, justified and defended
• Scott showing a clip from the Making of The Incredibles DVD bonus feature
• The team’s work room is a safe place. Ppl on the team have open disagreements, but there’s an air of humor in it. Always communicating
• Inspiration, incubation, execution. Leader’s job to identify where ideas are being killed.
• Inspiration (ideas & passions) -> Incubator (place to experiment with ideas) -> Execution (ideas manifested in plan for release)

• Which link is weakest? Not generating ideas, or not exploring them, or not committing to work out the details?
• 4 ways to do Incubation. Sequestered: R&D, special project, prototype. Staged: planned experimentation in schedule…
• … Ad-hoc: opportunity raised and supported. Stolen: people fudge estimates to make time.
• Google/3M’s 20% Time. Yahoo’s Hack Day. R&D budgets for experiments
• Scott Berkun showing photo of original Macintosh team. Steve Jobs sequestered them from the rest of Apple
• Space program is the simplest example of Staged Incubation
• Google’s 20% time is Ad-hoc Incubation. Doesn’t need special space or time
• So which type of incubation is best? Sequestered: no culture change required, risks isolated, “tech transfer” problem, Us vs. Them
• Staged: visible, part of the system, hard to protect. Ad-hoc: manager’s discretion, people must find time, easy to ignore
• Tech transfer = if you sequester a team, it’s problematic to get the creative goodness out of the team & into the greater organization
• Innovation is the same thing as problem solving — Scott Berkun
• Mistakes managers make… listen up folks!
• Egocentricity: the boss as creative star. Wearing blinders, only see their vision & feel design team is there to fulfill their vision
• There are people who have a history of regular innovation, but have a tendency to destroy teams & do a lot of damage along the way
• Mistakes managers make: micromanaging instead of providing cover. Lack confidence and get defensive. Don’t advocate team to the boss

• Take credit for success, delegate failure. Motivated by their political ambition. Don’t provide enough resources for experimentation
• The meta-decision: How much innovation? In how much time? What can you sacrifice? Quality, cost, schedule, expected features?
• Managers shouldn’t set their team up to fail by not providing enough time/resources/guidance/support/room to breathe
• All projects have three rough phases: design, implement, test. As a manager, introduce more time by adding 1st phase called Explore
• Expore> Design> Implement> Test. Experiments at the beginning which teach you stuff that’ll likely accelerate the rest of the process
• Experimental goals: “The goal of this experiment is to see if this design model can work, and to learn from how it fails”
• It’s the manager’s job to clarify goals for everyone who will judge results, or to sequester the experiment
• A manager’s failure to manage expectations ensures few experiments, lack of innovation
• Big explorations should be done first. The first day is when the bluest sky is still available
• Scott showing the <> problem space diagram that @ugleah also uses. Diverge then converge. Start with project vision, then…
• Checkpoints in the divergence/convergence method: brainstorm/affinity, three alternatives, two alternatives, one design, plan.
• “Who feels they have enough power in their job to be successful?” Only 20% of ppl raised their hands. I do because I’m independent!
• Tradeoffs: the first person to acknowledge role-based disagreements can lead their resolution
• Person at intersection of engineering, creatives and business will lead innovation
• Ego & rewards. Ppl w large egos want control over their work, visibility of results, respect from peers, proof of their worth

• Often ego = sensitivity, not arrogance. They may feel that their work is a personal reflection of them.
• Big egos tend to be driven by fear, anxiety. If they feel safe, their ego normalizes. Manager can provide safety without sacrifice.
• Creative safety. You know you’re in a safe environment when: criteria for approving ideas is clear, feedback honest & direct, …
• …playing field is politically transparent, crazier ideas than yours in motion, exchange ideas openly, opinions not taken personally
• Failure is encouraged, team has clear sense of parameters, constructive criticism, even playing field, clear but egoless leader
• Managing people with big egos: if their motivations satisfy the team goals, then just make sure to guide them in the right direction
• Scott Berkun plotting the members of U2 on graph of Ego vs. Talent.
• “Anyone who has a big ego and little talent is either a psychopath or has never had a manager who was honest with them”– Scott Berkun
• “If you manage someone who is not aware of their talent to ego ratio, you have no one to blame but yourself”
• Someone in the audience asked, “What if you’re co-managing a team?” “Well that’s bad from the get-go” — Scott Berkun
• Western cultures respond to hierarchical structures. Co-managing can send mixed messages
• Innovation has been a top buzzword for 10+ years. Now there’s waves of backlash against the word. But as a concept it’s sound
• Things that never happen: overnight success, entirely new biz model, innovation as predictable system, successful predictive models…
• …instant technological revolution. Ask innovators, not VPs or journalists
• Is innovation always good for business? Can a short-term positive response create long-term damage?

• Our culture is obsessed with growth. But if you don’t want to grow, you may never have to change a thing.
• BUT if you have an obligation to grow, you MUST innovate your product or process
• Not all innovation is visible. Process innovation: how are products made? Production/manufacturing, product support. Efficiency &costs
• Six Sigma (be afraid, says Scott). Largely a manufacturing analysis process, 36 defects out of a million. Not for design process
• Profit & loss simplified: take risks to obtain advantage, leverage advantage to create profits, enjoy profits, protect profits, repeat
• Repeat, maybe. But you have to decide when to take the next big risk.
• Innovation is expensive: high risk (off the map), abandon security by design, high personal stress, costs of making necessary mistakes
• The bigger the company, the higher the costs: # of dependencies increases, depth of customers to consider, larger stockholder impact
• 7 gates of innov: find idea, develop prototype, production, find cust’s, prove benefit>change, outwit competitors, launch at good time
• Entrepreneurs & Innovation: many startups began inside co’s, proposed ideas that were rejected. HP->Apple; Western Union->Bell
• Yahoo->Google; Fairchild SemiConductor-> Intel
• Many innovators preferred to stay, but when their ideas were rejected, they decided to do it themselves
• Frustrated innovators: van Gogh, Pollock, Farnsworth (TV), Carson (copy machine), Chesterburough (Vaseline), Holland (Submarine)
• “Thomas Edison deserves more credit for his business strategy than for being an inventor” — Scott Berkun. Balance b/w risk & reward
• Scott Berkun highly recommends “Innovators Dilemma,” written by Clayton Christensen

• When innovation is successful, profits follow. Co’s build structure to maximize profits. Managers are motivated to maximize returns
• When profits slow or competitors improve, co must abandon its profit centers, return to risk taking, reward initiative over efficiency
• Innoculative crash course in business innovation literature: diffusion theory, S-curve, adoption curve, crossing the chasm
• Diffusion theory by Everett Rogers: awareness>interest>evaluation>trial>adoption. Applies to products & ideas
• “The diffusion of innovation is a social process, based more on psychology and sociology than technology.”
• S-Curve (sigmoid): early adopters>majority>late adopters. More market share over time
• “Most products do not take off on these s-curve patterns; super successful products do” — Scott Berkun
• G-mail isn’t a failure because it doesn’t follow an S-curve, even if it isn’t market-dominant
• Cell phones, Windows much longer adoption curve than the s-curve
• Scott showing the bottom graphic here: http://nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/10/opinion/10op.graphic.ready.html Tech adoption curves
• Crossing chasm: target mkt, define complete product concept, position product, define mkt strat, choose best distrib channel, pricing
• Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
• Scott asks: are you sure you wanna do this? It’s high risk and many legends have failed. Do you want the lack of stability and stress?
• “Good work is rare” — Scott Berkun
• “You can become a market leader without ever coming up with a radically new idea, just by doing good stuff” — Scott Berkun

• What projects make you happy? Conventional: predictable, moderate return, dependence, incremental, love security
• Breakthrough: uncertain, possibly no return, independent, transformative, love beating the odds
• Innovation as a side effect: focus on solving imp probs for pl, profiting from solution, cust may need quality more than change
• Every culture has a max capacity for change. Too radical: fail regardless of creativity. Too conservative: never discover the limit
• Who are the other risk takers? What political capital do they use? How do they position their project? Who creates, who persuades?
• Attackers vs. responders: who has the advantage? The first to succeed with an idea? The first to follow a successful idea?
• [Alan Cooper says best-to-market beats first-to-market every time ]
• It’s like a chessboard, there’s no single answer. It’s a strategic choice
• Attackers (offense): small, smart, risk-prone, resilient. Must win to survive. No alternative. Aggressive philosophy
• Responders (defense): established & high-resourced. Prefer strategic advantage of 2nd move. Believes it can survive in 2nd place
• Know what makes you and your team happy, successful, creative. Goodness is more useful than innovation.
• Scott just revealed that @jmspool uses the session feedback forms to determine how much each speaker gets paid. I LOVE THAT!
• Scott Berkun’s session is over. Incredible day. Sooo much great info here. Can’t wait to read over and synthesize my notes

[Other UI13 sessions I attended: Peter Merholz and Andrew Crow; Dana Chisnell; Kim Goodwin]

Related Posts:

• UI13: Dana Chisnell’s “Usability Testing in the Wild” November 3, 2008 | 1 comments
• UI13: Peter Merholz and Andrew Crow’s “Design Strategy and Planning” November 3, 2008 | 2 comments
• DIY UX at An Event Apart Chicago 2009 October 20, 2009 | 13 comments
• A Q&A with the Speakers of UX London January 26, 2010 | 1 comments
• My Creating a Culture of UX workshop at UX London May 28, 2010 | 2 comments