The Myths of Innovation
This book investigates the creative process of innovating technology and systems. It takes the approach of poking holes in mistaken ideas people have of the process. I’d have preferred the approach of writing more directly about what works but the writing is excellent and contains some insights useful to me.
The book is often amusing but it focused enough to be useful. It covers specific ideas such as the myth of having a single inventor behind an advance – the reality being that often there are others as creative or more so than the figurehead that history associates with particular innovations.
Discovering problems actually requires just as much creativity as discovering solutions. There are many ways to look at any problem, and realizing a problem is often the first step toward a creative solution. To paraphrase John Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, a properly defined problem is partially solved.