Thursday, December 07, 2006

Ignite Seattle


I'm at Ignite Seattle, and I just saw a speaker talk about innovation. I disliked it so much I just had to complain about it online while at the actual event. The guy is Scott Berkun who talked about the myths of innovation. Unfortunately for me, I didn't agree with his assumptions. He started by saying we think of ideas as seeds that stand alone. He then went on to talk about the myth of Newton's Apple, talked about Edison, and so on.



Unfortunately for me, the content of his 5 minute speak was overshadowed by a sense of "yes yes, I know that" and another sense of "why is he dumbing this down so much?"



Know your audience.

1 comment:

Karen G. Anderson said...

Scott's a powerful speaker, and I think he deliberately oversimplifies at times to get a reaction and provoke discussion. That's a style popularized by marketing guru Seth Godin, and it can, at times, get on your nerves. But if there's any time when it's OK to oversimplify, it's Ignite's "Ask Later" 5-minute format. After hearing a few of the other speakers try to wrangle overly complex presentations into 5 minutes, I found Scott's talk refreshing.