Scott Berkun

The story of Newton getting hit with an apple, and having an ephiphany about gravity, is a myth - he made up the example for his biographer. We like stories about innovation around an ephiphany -- it puts all of the force of discovery around something external, that could have happened to anyone. The truth is that Newton spent about 15 years working out the math of gravity - we already knew that it existed before he started.

In the book, uses the myths as a jumping off point.

More on ephiphany - there are breakthrough moments, but they come after lots of trial and error. Lots of work. All of the focus tends to be on the sexy "eureka" part, but there is a lot more work that goes into that moment.

Exercise - if you think of yourself as an innovator, you should take an ordinary thing in your life (phone, tv, etc), and go back in time and get the real story about how that thing came into existence. It is surely more interesting and chaotic than you know. Taking risks, doing things against protocol.

If you dig into the history of space travel, it is a chronological of successive failures, punctuated by successes - going into orbit, landing on the moon, etc.

The history of software - have some good books, but don't have many software historians. So, there are a lot of myths there, that haven't been debunked. Usually the people who innovate are humble about what they did.

History of innovation is risk-taking. Most risks don't pan out. But history is focused on change, when things "happen". So, a lot of the work of innovation is lost to the history books. Explorers are another example - they picked points on the map that were unknown, and went there. But there were long periods of dead time - traveling to new turf. Situations where you will be uncomfortable, where you can't control all of the variables.

Persistence plays an incredibly large role in the history of innovation.

Innovation by definition is change - there will always be people who have a negative emotional response to your change.

Anthropologists work in the field of innovation - "Diffusion of Innovations" (book) - that argues that the culture is what brings innovation. What are people ready for, what sorts of things do they want - thus the history of innovation is strongly influenced by what people will adopt, what they are ready for, what can become a popular thing.

3M - Minnesotta Mining Manufacturing. Started as entrepreneurial concern, started in minerals (was hot in 1885). Masking tape was invented at 3M as a skunk works. A sandpapaer engineer was visiting a client, and had an idea for how to solve a problem. He had the idea, but was rejected by his boss 4 times -- had to do it on his own. The boss, who did the rejecting, realized that Masking Tape was a huge product - that he rejected 4 times. So, he didn't want to repeat that mistake, he wanted to institutionalize innovation into the company.

Quote from William McKnight, 3m chairman, 1948