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

David Kord Murray began his career as an aerospace engineer working on the conceptual development team for the International Space Station. He was the head of innovation for the software company Intuit and held similar positions at other Fortune 500 companies. He lives in Tahoe City, California.

In a book poised to become the bible of innovation, a renowned creativity expert reveals the key to the creative process-"borrowing".

As a former aerospace scientist, Fortune 500 executive, chief innovation officer, inventor, and software entrepreneur, David Kord Murray has made a living by coming up with innovative ideas. In Borrowing Brilliance he shows readers how new ideas are merely the combination of existing ones by presenting a simple six-step process that anyone can use to build business innovation:

•Defining-Define the problem you're trying to solve.

•Borrowing-Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem.

•Combining-Connect and combine these borrowed ideas.

•Incubating-Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution.

•Judging-Identify the strength and weakness of the solution.

•Enhancing-Eliminate weak points while enhancing strong ones.

Each chapter features real-life examples of brilliant borrowers, including profiles of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the Google guys), George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and other creative thinkers. Murray used these methods to re-create his own career and he shows readers how to harness them to find creative solutions.

Publishers Weekly

There really is nothing new under the sun, says entrepreneur Murray. All good ideas are constructed out of already existing ones, and rather than viewing borrowing as theft, we should view it as a necessary-even desirable-path to invention. Charles Darwin did it, as did George Lucas, Steve Jobs, Stephen King and a host of other innovators who knew how to take existing ideas and turn them into new answers to old problems. Murray draws heavily on his own experience and well-known successes-the evolution of the Walkman to the iPod, for example-to drive home his thesis, and even dips into the neurology of idea creation. The somewhat hashed-to-death point takes a more practical turn as Murray explains how the average organization can borrow successfully; his "Brilliantly Borrowed Brainstorming" system effectively lays out the steps, from identifying a good idea to adapting it to one's own uses. While somewhat repetitive, Murray's prescriptions are lucid and helpful, and this book should garner prime shelf space. (Sept.)

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Prologue: Along, Strange Trip

Introduction Honor Among Thieves

Pt. I The Origin of a Creative Idea

Ch. 1 The First Step - Defining

Ch. 2 The Second Step - Borrowing

Ch. 3 The Third Step - Combining

Pt. II The Evolution of a Creative Idea

Ch. 4 The Fourth Step - Incubating

Ch. 5 The Fifth Step - Judging

Ch. 6 The Sixth Step - Enhancing

Conclusion: The Road Less Traveled

Epilogue: What a Long, Strange Trip

App. A Summary of the Six Steps

App. B Suggested Reading List