Book Review: “The Myths of Innovation”
In “The Myths of Innovation,” author Scott Berkun attempts to debunk the myths and stories surrounding how innovation happens, and presents his findings in a funny, historical and authoritative manner. The book initially sets out to define what innovation is, and how the term “innovation” has become one of the most overused terms in the business world due to overuse by marketing and advertising. In fact, Berkun is so sensitive to overusing the word himself that he challenged himself to use the word as infrequently as possible, and seems to have succeeded in doing so in only using it 65 times in the entire book.
The format of the book is setup so that each chapter explores the myths surrounding innovation, then reveals the facts about each breakthrough, followed by practical insight that can be applied to a real-world situation. The book provides many historical stories of innovation and how each breakthrough came about, pointing out that much of what we hear and learn about innovation is in fact either greatly exaggerated or simply false. There was much detail showcasing who was behind various breakthroughs, and insight into how each breakthrough happened – and in most cases there wasn’t the illustrious Eureka! moment. Berkun shows us that in the vast majority of cases there is a lot of very hard work that goes into any successful breakthrough, and there are countless stories of failures along the way to success. Berkun walks the reader through many evidence based examples of both successes and failures ranging from stories of current companies like Flickr and Craigslist to historical legends such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Thomas Jefferson. There are many interesting facts and surprises along the way, and what could be somewhat dry material comes to live through these examples.
The final chapters of the book serve as a how-to guide for making innovation happen. Berkun calls this his ‘simple plan’ and outlines what he feels is the best way to go about making something great. This section of the book alone contains a lot of valuable information and would be a useful read itself for any team lead, manager or business person trying to innovate.