Creativity Comes Naturally

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A Little Talent Helps

Two phases:
Creation
Delivery
Vincent Van Gogh, age 9

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How innovative?
Long term vs. short term
Research vs.
advanced
development
Leap vs. step
Directly
determine
how broad the net

Understand the Actors,

and their Motivations.

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Beyond the edge

Have a Vision

Design for today => instantly obsolete

Start with todays
exotic:
tomorrow's
standard

unrealistic
read sci-fi
watch movies
philosophy
dream
customer
problem
direction

Xerox Alto

Moore's Law
Invention then
product
Selling futures
crushes the present and the future

The Osborne Effect

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Taking Risks
Demand failure
Insufficient failure =>
insufficient innovation
Success through diversity
IBM: 1-5% of projects
enter products
Sun: 10-20%

Or Inspired?

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Even
failures
are useful

Reckless?

Don't get
upset,
Learn!

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Serendipity
Discovery by accident
The color purple
Penicillin

Isolation

Inspiration happens when it

happens
Manufacturing Luck
Being in the right place at the right time
Have a gut feeling (vision) that there's
something there
What they call in the stock market "a
diverse portfolio"

Away from the old ways

Away from the narrow
vision
Away from the infighting

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Start Small
Big groups are

Perspective

expensive
bureaucratic
Inflexible

Small groups are

inexpensive
creative
flexible
limited in power

Overall view
Investigate the opposition
Investigate tangents
eg Java & CE

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Craziness
Creative people are crazy
Feed the craziness
Let the train jump the
tracks
But there are limits...

When you've finally got

something...
What do you do with it?

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Design & Implementation

Inseparable
No such thing as an
"architect"
The Devil is in the Details
Iterate up and down the
levels of abstraction
Throw everything out at
least three times
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Don't confuse:
Hacking together a demo
Engineering a product

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Politics - Internal
Organizations develop
antibodies
Bend new things to look
like the old
Territoriality
Close-mindedness

Obsolete yourself
If you can invent it,
someone else can
e.g.. 68K => SPARC

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Technology Transfer
Create new
and let the old
die out

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Don't fight the Genetic

Code
Organizations do what
they do
Small steps work
Large ones don't

Infect the old

and transform
into the new

eg. Xerox - a copier

company
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Politics - External
The usual competitive pressures
Extreme forms in software
Consortiums - NeWS
Free software - Emacs
Economies of scale - Microsoft
Engineering: large; Unit Cost: tiny

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Wanting Too Much

Big piece of a small pie
vs Small piece of a big pie
Or no pie at all
NeWS
Beta

It is easy to be seduced by
tales of riches
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Launch
Motivate!
Explain why it's interesting
in 10 seconds
at a deep level

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Continuity of passion
The People must follow
through
Researchers can't just do
research
Papers
ideas only
re-develop to incorporate
OK for very long term/abstract
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Standard Failure Modes

After success...
Cope with growth
Morale
Overwork
Creating a community
It's not a small communal
affair anymore

Cool, but who cares?

Not a big enough leap
Too big a leap
Boring
Killed
company
competition

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As Time Passes

Summary
Innovation is (relatively)
easy
Transfer to a product is
hard

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Project size &

cost increase
Uncertainty
decreases
Risk transforms:
tech to
business

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Few solid rules

Many failures
Success is rare
Every success unique
But success is sweet!

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