A class full of The Myths of Innovation

Many universities use The Myths of Innovation in courses on entrepreneurship or creativity, but David Burkus lined up his class for a photo, which I promised to post here.

Among other places he teaches at OSLEP, a program for top students across Oklahoma and they’re seen here.

burkus-class

If you use my book in a course, let me know. If you send in a photo I’ll post it here.

And of course you can read two full chapters of the book here.

What work traditions need to go away?

One theme of my book The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com & The Future of Work, is questioning aging work practices. Particularly ones followed our of tradition without evidence they contribute to quality of work.

Here’s a list of work practices that should be reconsidered: is there any evidence these contribute to work performance in any way?

  • Dress codes (ties, skirts)
  • Measurement by time, not performance
  • Casual Fridays
  • Hour long meetings by default
  • Mission statements
  • 9 to 5 work day
  • unpaid overtime
  • The cc: line on email (this was suggested 4 times)
  • Corner offices
  • Conference calls
  • Unequal pay
  • Anti-morale morale events

This list was generated from replies to two twitter posts .

While I’m happy to hear gripes about practices done poorly, ideally I’m looking for practices that have no value no matter how well they’re done.

What work traditions do you think need to go away?

 

Grand summary of posts on Remote work & Yahoo

With my upcoming book about my experience at WordPress.com, where everyone works from home, I’ve been following the Yahoo announcement closely. Here’s a rundown of the better posts I’ve seen about their policy change and notable responses:

I took the middle ground defending both remote work and Marissa Mayer.

If you know of other excellent responses please leave a comment. Thanks.