Customer Reviews

Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Summary
David Kord Murray; aerospace engineer, entrepreneur, innovator, fortune 500 executive; has managed to write one of the most personal, practical and insightful books on the innovation process. It is well written and a joy to read.

Audience
If you want to learn how to innovate; whether you an aspiring or current entrepreneur, working in a large/small corporation or self employed; whether you are working in the corporate world, or entertainment, media or academia; you will find within these pages a process that will lead to higher quantity and quality of ideas. Murray shares with you not only his personal story that illuminates and illustrates the process of innovation, but also gives you a unrivaled view into the journey of an innovator; a hero's journey. This is not for someone that just wants to manage the innovation process; this is for someone that wants to innovate; individually, as a team or company; someone who wants to generate ideas and implement them.

Detailed Review
I have been researching creativity and innovation for 2 decades and I have read far and wide on the subject and even developed my own innovation system based on my research; this is the first time I have read a book that covers the same breath and depth of my research and that came to the same conclusions. Murray's research and journey is very reminiscent from engineer to entrepreneur to innovator. His reading list (some listed at the back of the book and some that I can tell from his writing) mirrors my own from scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs. He draws from the lives and ideas of people like Einstein, Darwin, Edison, Disney, Jobs, Gates, Nash, Lucas, Page and Brin and draws from research in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy, cinematography, economics, biology, evolution and business to develop a process that is one of the best encapsulations of true innovation.

I am not sure I have ever read a business book like this. Murray shares his own personal journey that led to him developing this innovation process. The story is very personal and probably one of the most insightful books on the joys and agonies of innovation and entrepreneurship. His story not only describes the ideas he developed for his companies; a ground breaking financial services firm, one of the most successful direct mail campaigns and successful online tax software; but also shows the messy, warts and all innovation process. Most authors stick to explaining their successes and gloss over their failures. Murray courageously shares the ups and downs, and I feel this makes the book even more powerful. Innovation is messy and most people focus on the end result too much, when the real magic of innovation is in this messy, iterative, recursive and fractal process.

I have to admit when I saw this book and it's subtitle - `The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others' I was expecting yet another lightweight, fluffy book on how to innovate. I was pleasantly surprised, no amazed, to find one of the most thorough articulations of the innovation process. I have been teaching innovation for years and I find myself in awe at how much Murray has managed to fit into this book while making it practical and down to earth. Anyone can pick up this book and if they really read and follow his advice can develop their own ideas. My own personal mission has been to teach innovation to people and finally I have found a book that explains the real process.

Recommendation
The book is well written and the stories bring the deep ideas behind innovation to life. For many years now I have been recommending a series of books to people who want to learn about innovation: The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm, How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation and A Technique for Producing Ideas (Advertising Age Classics Library). Murray has managed to write a book that encapsulates all these books and makes them obsolete!

Let me repeat; anyone can pick up this book and if they really read and follow his advice can develop their own ideas/innovations. I can't give any higher praise.

NOTE ABOUT THE REVIEW TITLE: Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal - to me is about how when a great artist understands the thought that went into a great idea or a piece of art, they don't just create a replica, they generate a piece of original art themselves that draws from the very essence of an idea. It's the difference between iPod and Zune; iPod reinvented the personal music experience (great artist), Zune just copied the iPod (good artist). Read this book and you will understand how to be a great artist.

Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube

Just finished reading "Borrowing Brillance" by David Kord Murray... which I heard about when it was reviewed in BusinessWeek.

The overarching theme behind Murray's book is business ideas and where they come from... with that spot often not being one of "out of the blue" originality. That said, I found the guy himself as being almost as interesting as where the ideas come from.

The Guy

Murray seems quite the interesting fellow given his personal and business highs and lows described in the book. He first worked as a NASA engineer and then became an entrepreneur who was poised to sell his Lake Tahoe based financial company for $50 million, and would up with close to nothing. Through a combination of his past experience, lots of reading and a good contact made, Murray eventually found himself consulting with Intuit on the Turbo Tax direct mail program. This then led to a full time Innovation Exec role at Intuit, and then another entrepreneurial venture and now him writing this book and living back in Lake Tahoe.

Solid stuff and his story seems to be an interesting example of how speed bumps can come and you may not know where you'll wind up, but you just try to keep moving forward.

The Business Ideas

As stated previously, the book works with the concepts of ideas... and how to generate, repurpose and repackage them. Following up on this idea of pattern recognition and meaning making, Murray writes of how as a business society we're now out of the information age and onto the conceptual or innovation age.

The structure of the book is broken into 6 steps:

1. Defining - Define the problem and figure out the right one to work on. The idea here is on of scope and how small problems can both fit within and when solved, sometimes create other ones. Murray cited Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as good people to think of when considering problem definition. The idea behind Google began when they were Stanford PhD students, each working on a separate data mining problem. This led to thinking about organizing information, which led to search. Now that the lower level problem of search has been worked (and of course, continues to be), Google has moved back to the high level problem they talk about of organizing the world's information.

Related to this idea, I also think of the information architect field and how it focuses on the presentation of data, facts and ideas... interesting stuff.

2. Borrowing - Take ideas from places near and far. This is tied to the third step, but focuses on looking for the answers to your problems from yes, your competitors, but also other fields of work entirely. Murray writes heavily about Hollywood and how the construction of movies into acts with emotional triggers and levels was something he thought about in relation to the Turbo Tax offering while at Intuit.

This is in many ways the concept of critical observation... just with a wide net.

3. Combining - Throw the ideas together and try lots of different iterations. Related to borrowing, Murray writes about Star Wars and how George Lucas spend years working on it until he had the perfect combination of science fiction and mythology (with the light saber as an example). Also discussed by Murray in relation to these borrowed combinations were Google utilizing page ranks, Disneyland being built to scale like a movie set and Facebook as a metaphor of a college yearbook.

Interesting concept... causes me to think about Social Networking and web publishing as done through various sources such as Facebook, blogs, Digg and Ning among others.

4. Incubating - allow the combinations to come together.
This step centers on the concept of the subconscious mind being the best source of creative ideas. Murray describes historical intellects like Einstein and Newton as being in touch with their subconscious, but also provides his thoughts (in the three bullets below) on how people can train themselves to get more in touch with their subconscious.

- Input: Think about what problems you want to solve.
- Incubation: Work on clearing the mind... whether it be throw daily walks, meditation or simply doing creative work immediately after a good night of sleep.
- Output: Be willing to let ideas in, but not be held captive by them. Sort of a duality concept of listening to ideas and emotional responses, but at the same time having doubts about them so as to not get led astray by something that is not a true belief.

I liked this concept as it made me think of how creativity doesn't always come, but when it does, you want to run with and get the most out of it. Most simple example of this would be people who jot down thoughts that come to them so that they're not lost in the ether...

5. Judging - Identify strengths and weaknesses... the throwing out of the bad parts of any idea and expanding of the best.

6. Enhancing - Eliminate the weak and enhance the strong. This sounds a lot like point five, but Murray describes it as in many ways being like a recycling of points one through five. Just continually cycle the process.

The conclusion of Murray's book contains his view of "the creative life"... and how one can view these steps as being part of a creative process around more than just business.

Solid stuff and it reminds me of some of the great John Gardner's writing.

Borrowing Brilliance is one of the most intelligent, thought-provoking, and inspiring accounts of the creative process that I have ever encountered. For those of you who are active creative thinkers, you must acknowledge that the process/technique of creative thinking and innovation is articulated so well by author David Kord Murray, that he has made it accessible to those who once viewed it impossible or solely, a 'gift'.
An exhaustive amount of research in all disciplines be it psychology, philosophy, science, literature or entertainment, along with the variety of personalities, inventors, scientists, authors, and entrepreneurs cited, sprinkled with the author's own personal story make this a compelling read. Mr. Murray puts it all on the line by exposing both his own failures and triumphs to demonstrate how his technique is applied and works. For those of you who do not think you have what it takes to be a creative thinker, you will learn. For those of you who have your name on copyrights, trademarks, & patents and believe you are the ultimate creative thinker, you will be humbled. This is truly an important book that I highly recommend for the individual and professional alike.

I've read many books about creativity over the years in search of golden nuggets. This book fulfills that search! It is amazingly well-written and provides a real action plan for innovation. Not like other fluffy business books about finding good ideas. This book is a must read.

Bottom line: good book to add to the innovation book library because it integrates borrowed brillance on innovation into an easy-read suitable for the masses. David Murray is a great role model of his teachings. He has borrowed the brillance of Peter Senge, Albert Einstein, existing root cause analysis principles, the creativity techniques of DeBono et al, TRIZ, a number of engineering principles, and much more. If the way he presents it enables more people to benefit from these principles and practices, then that's a good thing. For the well-read and experienced innovator, you'll pick up a few new examples and perhaps some new ways of communicating what you already know.

Pro:
+ Takes a tough (vague) subject and actually defines a specific approach to creating creativity (in "six"steps)
+ Clever metaphors and good examples of creativity, from Newton to the creation of Google
+ Take a potentially boring topic and makes it fun/interesting reading
+ Uses the concept of Borrowing Brilliance to write the text itself (e.g. the book is laced with creative metaphor)
+ Revisits the process periodically to review "in a nutshell"
+ Clearly an accomplished and innovative writer and thinker who has studied all topics related to creativity within the same domain, across similar domains, and even who has studied distant domains

Con:
- The "common sense" or metaphorical approach does not make examples true; metaphors and logic are always flawed (for example, computer is pure logic, yet it crashes once in a while)
- Simply too few specifically-cited references. True he refers to the works of many others, building on them, but this isn't necessarily empirical or scientific proof, as he cites entire works from these other sources, his conclusions and interpretations
- For me, levels beneath the six steps are not as concisely presented, making replication harder (especially the 6th step)
- Too much reliance on leading with examples to communicate points! In some cases the metaphor is all you get. Please find a way to say it succinctly first, then supply the examples that support the hypothesis.
- Discouraging remarks regarding the use of brainstorming - the author's corrective actions are ok, but not the only way to solve the problem he identifies (I use other adjustments than the one he suggests)

Bottom line: Highly recommended and I consider this a top 5 book for my collection. However, it is my suggestion to be careful about what you consider fact based on scientific proof. With this in mind, I'll still rate it "5 stars" because of superior handing of difficult and amorphous subject matter, lively examples, and easy reading.

Finally someone has brought innovation into reach for every individual, in every aspect of life. The personal stories cover the highs and lows of the author's life which we can all relate to, and the business stories show how well his six steps really have worked time and time again.

Easy to read, easy to use and fun all wrapped into one. More than I could have asked for in a business book.

The main thesis of the book is that creativity does not emerge from nowhere and there is a fog of misunderstanding about this fact.

The book makes a very convincing case about this myth in just a few chapters. Unfortunately the book runs for almost 250 pages - and author's name is printed on every other. Book also includes some so misleading elements that the review cannot be any more positive.

The writer has my sympathies as I see that the editor should have pruned some of the outstanding repetition, both verbatim and factual, and squeezed out yet another 100 pages. But, as it is, an easy and at many occasions enjoyable reading.

My major concern, being a cognitive scientist, is the psychological view of creativity expressed by the book. While the book gives a lot of good advice on how to succeed in a creative profession, it fails to deliver any coherent view of us people as creative entities. It seems that the writer fails to draw a line between skill, talent and hidden forces of creativity available to great minds. He actually underlines this so many times that the lack of acknowledgement of this obvious contradiction is weird. For one, all of his arguments about the invocation of subconscious could be easily interpreted in a non-psychodynamic paradigm. While this might be only a matter of belief to some, I find it disturbing to leave out the option for the "creative genius" to rule us mortals with their upgraded connection to subconscious.

In overall,
reader - enjoy but beaware, not all that is said stands the ground.

Every innovator who wants to cross boundaries has to read this book. Author filled the book with first hand experiences that make the book easy to read while delivering the message.

Very insightful; fuel for the creative soul. Amazon provided quick and easy access to this obvious knowledge. I would definitely recommend this site for gently used books.