Scott Berkun

I ran in to a book by Scott Berkun about innovation. Here's a summary:

A few highlights are:

• Divinchi’s quote – “Stand still and watch the patterns, which by pure chance have been generated: Stains on the wall, or the ashes in a fireplace, or the clouds in the sky, or the gravel on the beach or other things. If you look at them carefully you might discover miraculous inventions.”
• Inventors with hard work and ideas from others take thoughts and put them together into a finished puzzle – for instance, the cell phone is a culmination of various technologies.
• Many variables going on during an invention – for instance what would have happened if IBM bought Apple in the beginning? Steve Jobs offered it to them in the early stages.
• History is romanticized by those who interpreted it and there is no objective history.
• Page 91 – To brainstorm correctly you need to have three things: facts, ideas, and solutions. And you need to spend quality time in each section.
• Page 132 – Pick the right problem to solve and defining them correctly – remember the palm pilot objectives  – Fits in shirt pocket, syncs seamlessly with PC, fast and easy to use, and no more than $299.
• Page 146 – Software that rewards people for slowing down and thinking about what they’re reading and writing might be the greatest innovation of all time
• The interesting factors of why the United States is one of the few countries on the English standard and not metric…just has not caught on.