Scott Berkun

Author

Technometria: The Myths of Innovation
74 minutes, 34.2mb, recorded 2007-07-09
Scot Berkun

How do you know whether a hot technology will succeed or fail? Or where the next big idea will come from? The best answers come not from the popular myths we tell about innovation, but instead from time-tested truths that explain how we've made it this far. In The Myths of Innovation, author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at innovation history, including the software and Internet Age, to reveal how ideas truly become successful innovations-truths that people can apply to today's challenges. He joins Phil, Scott, and Ben to discuss his new book and his career.

He first reviews his background and what led him to leave a position at Microsoft to become a freelance writer. He gives some pointers for individuals wanting to find a career in writing. He talks about his first book, The Art of Project Management, and how that book was developed. The group then assesses innovation as a concept and Scott gives some examples of some of the mistaken beliefs about how popular inventions and innovations came about. The discussion is a fascinating overview of the essential truth of how new ideas come about.


Scott Berkun is an author, public speaker and consultant. He worked as a manager at Microsoft from 1994-2003, on projects including (v1-5) of Internet Explorer, Windows and MSN. He started his own consulting practice in 2003. He is the author of the best seller The Art of Project Management (O’Reilly 2005). He currently teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington. Scott is an excellent speaker for hire, and frequently performs workshops, talks, and courses for organizations, conferences and the ocassional living room couch.

Scott grew up in Queens NYC, studied design, philosophy and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating with a B.S. in Logic and Computation (’94). He currently lives somewhere deep in the woods outside of Seattle, Washington.

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This free podcast is from our Technometria with Phil Windley series.

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