{"id":3185,"date":"2008-02-03T14:24:06","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T14:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3185"},"modified":"2008-02-03T14:24:06","modified_gmt":"2008-02-03T14:24:06","slug":"eureka_it_reall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3185","title":{"rendered":"Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janet Rae-Dupree<\/a>: <\/p>\n

WE\u2019VE all heard the tales of the apple falling on Newton\u2019s head and Archimedes leaping naked from his bath shrieking \u201cEureka!\u201d Many of us have even heard that eBay was created by a guy who realized that he could help his fianc\u00e9e sell Pez dispensers online.
\nThe fact that all three of these epiphany stories are pure fiction stops us short. As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Innovators and other creative types, we believe, stand apart from the crowd, wielding secrets and magical talents beyond the rest of us.
\nBalderdash. Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time.
\n\u201cThe most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems,\u201d explains Scott Berkun in his 2007 book, \u201cThe Myths of Innovation.\u201d \u201cMost innovations come without epiphanies, and when powerful moments do happen, little knowledge is granted for how to find the next one. To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point. The goal isn\u2019t the magic moment: it\u2019s the end result of a useful innovation.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet Rae-Dupree<\/a>: <\/p>\n

WE\u2019VE all heard the tales of the apple falling on Newton\u2019s head and Archimedes leaping naked from his bath shrieking \u201cEureka!\u201d Many of us have even heard that eBay was created by a guy who realized that he could help his fianc\u00e9e sell Pez dispensers online.
\nThe fact that all three of these epiphany stories are pure fiction stops us short. As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Innovators and other creative types, we believe, stand apart from the crowd, wielding secrets and magical talents beyond the rest of us.
\nBalderdash. Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time.
\n\u201cThe most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems,\u201d explains Scott Berkun in his 2007 book, \u201cThe Myths of Innovation.\u201d \u201cMost innovations come without epiphanies, and when powerful moments do happen, little knowledge is granted for how to find the next one. To focus on the magic moments is to miss the point. The goal isn\u2019t the magic moment: it\u2019s the end result of a useful innovation.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}