How do you determine whether a hot new technology will succeed or fail? Or where the next big idea will come from? If you subscribe to the popular myths of innovation, it's impossible to answer these questions. Our beliefs about how new ideas come about are based on wishful thinking and romanticized ideas of history. Like the story of how Newton discovered gravity when an apple hit him on the head.

In the new paperback edition of The Myths of Innovation, bestselling author Scott Berkun takes a careful look at the history of innovation, including the recent software and Internet age, to reveal powerful truths about how ideas become successful innovations -- truths that people can apply to the challenges of the present day. By understanding how Einstein's discovery of E=mc2 or Tim Berner Lee's creation of the Web were based on the re-use of work done by others, you will see new ways to develop existing knowledge into new innovations.

Each entertaining chapter centers on breaking apart a powerful myth. Through Berkun's extensive research into the truth about past innovations in technology, business and science, you'll learn lessons from the expensive failures and dramatic successes of innovations past, and understand how innovators achieved what they did -- and what you need to do to be an innovator yourself. You'll discover:

• Why breakthrough thinking takes time
• How all stories of innovations are distorted by the history effect
• How to overcome people's resistance to new ideas
• Why all innovation is a collaborative process
• How innovation depends on persuasion
• Why problems are more important than solutions
• How the good innovation is the enemy of the great
• Why the biggest challenge is knowing when it's good enough

"For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong." -- Scott Berkun, from the text.

Scott Berkun is well-versed in the business of innovation. A member of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999, he wrote the 2008 bestseller, Making Things Happen (O'Reilly).

"This book cuts through the hype, analyzes what is essential, and more importantly, what is not. You will leave with a thorough understanding of what really drives innovation."

-- Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com

"I loved this book. It's an easy-to-read playbook for anyone wanting to lead and manage positive change in their business."

-- Frank McDermott, Marketing Manager, EMI Music

"Insightful, inspiring, evocative, and just plain fun to read it's totally great."

-- John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox, and Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC); current Chief of Confusion

"Small, simple, powerful: an innovative book about innovation."

-- Don Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, Northwestern University; author of Emotional Design and Design of Everyday Things

"The naked truth about innovation is ugly, funny, and eye-opening, but it sure isn't what most of us have come to believe. With this book, Berkun sets us free to try to change the world unencumbered with misconceptions about how innovation happens."

-- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start

"Brimming with insights and historical examples, Berkun's book not only debunks widely held myths about innovation but also points the ways toward making your new ideas stick. Even in today's ultra-busy commercial world, reading this book will be time well spent."

-- Tom Kelley, GM, IDEO; author of The Ten Faces of Innovation