The Myths of Innovation

Scott Berkun argues that most of what people believe about innovation is based on romanticized legends rather than historical evidence. The expanded paperback edition examines 10 pervasive myths about how new ideas emerge and change the world, then provides four additional chapters of practical advice. Berkun defines innovation most potently as "significant positive change" (xix) and contends that the word has been so overused in business and marketing that it has lost any real meaning. He urges readers and organizations to speak in concrete terms about their actual goals rather than hiding behind vague jargon.

The book opens by dismantling the myth of epiphany, the belief that great ideas arrive in singular, magical flashes of insight. Berkun traces this belief to religious origins, where all creativity was attributed to divine power, and notes its persistence in English words like "museum" and "music," both derived from the Greek muses. He examines the legend of Newton's apple, pointing out that Newton was never struck by falling fruit, spent 20 years developing his mathematical explanation of gravity, and built on concepts that ancient civilizations already understood. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, told journalists there was no single Eureka moment behind the Web's creation, yet reporters kept searching for one. Drawing on psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's study of nearly 100 creative people, Berkun identifies a three-part pattern: a period of immersion and problem understanding, a period of incubation during which the subconscious processes information, and an eventual insight that surfaces from this deep work. He introduces "associative ability," the talent for finding connections between unrelated concepts, as a key trait of innovators and concludes that epiphany is best understood as an occasional bonus of sustained effort, not a controllable catalyst.

Berkun then challenges the assumption that we understand the history of innovation, arguing that historical accounts are shaped by hindsight, omission, and bias. Johannes Gutenberg, often ranked among the most influential people in history, was not a hero in his own time; he was simply a craftsman trying to make a living, and the Chinese had invented movable type centuries before him. Berkun introduces the concept of techno-evolutionism, the belief that current technologies are the inevitable conclusion of human invention, and uses the history of the personal computer to demonstrate how timelines create a false sense of inevitability. The PC's development involved competing efforts from Apple, Xerox PARC (Xerox's advanced research center), Atari, and IBM, with outcomes shaped by business decisions such as Atari and Hewlett-Packard rejecting Apple's proposal and Xerox choosing not to market its Alto computer.

The third chapter dismantles the myth that a reliable method for innovation exists. Berkun categorizes six ways innovations begin: hard work in a specific direction, hard work with a direction change (as with Post-it Notes, which originated from an unintentionally weak adhesive), curiosity (as with Velcro, inspired by burrs on clothing), the quest for wealth, necessity (as with Craigslist, which grew from a simple email list), and combinations of these factors. He lists eight challenges every innovator faces and calculates that, assuming a generous 50% chance of overcoming each one, the cumulative probability of success is less than 1%. He adds that the origin story matters less than the challenges overcome along the way.

Berkun then exposes the myth that people love new ideas. He recounts how Alexander Graham Bell was turned down by Western Union and lists parallel rejections experienced by Google's founders, George Lucas, Albert Einstein, Galileo, and Charles Darwin. He argues that humans have an evolutionary basis for fearing novelty and that innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits but on how they make people feel, whether through ego, fear, political self-interest, or attachment to existing beliefs. Drawing on sociologist Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations, Berkun identifies five factors that determine how quickly innovations spread: relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and habits, complexity, trialability, and observability.

The chapter on the lone inventor shows that innovation is almost always collaborative, built on prior work, and credited to individuals largely for convenience. Edison did not invent the electric light; Humphry Davy and Joseph Swan preceded him. Berkun explains simultaneous invention, in which multiple people independently develop the same innovation around the same time, using calculus (developed separately by Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz) and television as examples. He traces the cultural shift toward crediting individual creators to the Renaissance, before which creation was considered God's prerogative and the makers of ancient innovations like the Egyptian pyramids remained anonymous.

The sixth chapter argues that good ideas are not hard to find. Berkun contends that humans are inherently creative but that educational and professional systems reward conformity over independent thought. He quotes Nobel laureate Linus Pauling: "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas" (88), and traces the proper use of brainstorming back to advertising executive Alex Osborn's Applied Imagination, whose four rules emphasize volume, wildness, building on others' ideas, and deferring judgment.

Berkun tackles the myth that managers know more about innovation than their employees by tracing professional management's roots to Frederick Taylor's "scientific management," a factory-era philosophy designed to optimize repetitive tasks, minimize chance, and take control away from individual workers. He identifies five challenges managers of innovation must address: nurturing the flow of ideas, building supportive environments, protecting teams from organizational threats, executing through necessary compromises, and persistently persuading stakeholders.

The chapter on whether the best ideas win identifies seven secondary factors that determine adoption beyond an idea's intrinsic quality: culture, dominant design (a leading design that gains market lock-in and shapes subsequent products, such as the QWERTY keyboard layout), inheritance and tradition, politics, economics, subjective goodness, and short-term versus long-term thinking. Berkun introduces the goodness/adoption paradox through the World Wide Web: HTML was not the best technology available, but its simplicity lowered barriers to entry, enabling explosive growth that technically superior alternatives might not have achieved.

Berkun devotes a chapter to problems and solutions, arguing that problem finding matters more than problem solving. He illustrates creative problem framing through Jeff Hawkins, creator of the Palm Pilot, who defined four specific constraints for the device and then carved a wooden prototype to test the form factor. These tight constraints guided every design decision and enabled a successful product where better-funded competitors had failed. The chapter also discusses serendipity through Percy Spencer, a radar engineer who discovered microwave cooking after finding a melted candy bar near radar equipment, arguing that what matters is not the chance encounter but the innovator's willingness to chase curiosity.

The chapter on whether innovation is always good argues that all innovations produce both positive and negative effects. The Wright brothers pitched their airplane as a tool to end war, yet Orville Wright lived to witness aircraft enabling devastating bombing campaigns in both World Wars. Berkun details the story of DDT, a pesticide that successfully controlled malaria but triggered cascading ecological disruptions. He concludes that the best philosophy accepts both change and tradition, avoiding the trap of embracing all new ideas simply because they are new.

The epilogue synthesizes these arguments into practical guidance. Berkun introduces the "knowing-doing gap," the enormous distance between understanding how to do something and being willing to do it, and presents a five-point plan: pick a project and start working on it; forget innovation jargon and focus on being good; build trust within teams; make teams smaller when things stall; and treat interesting mistakes as learning opportunities. He recounts Pixar president Ed Catmull's advice that honesty about not knowing all the answers, combined with removing socially destructive individuals regardless of their talent, matters more than any innovation framework. The final chapters offer hands-on guidance on creative thinking, pitching ideas, and sustaining motivation. On pitching, Berkun outlines a nine-step process, from refining the idea and preparing three versions of the pitch (5 seconds, 30 seconds, and 5 minutes) to testing it on honest critics. On motivation, he argues that the difference between an artist and someone who fantasizes about being one is the daily discipline of seeking motivation even when it feels like work.