Sep

A Look at Innovation from a Different Angle

This is one of the few books that I not only listened to it, but afterwards purchased the hard copy.Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others is simply a good book.

The author of Borrowing Brilliance, David Kord Murray, has an impressive résumé. Not only is he a rocket scientist who worked on numerous projects for NASA and the Pentagon but he’s also a successful entrepreneur, having sold Taxnet, a company he co-founded that specializes in e-filing software, to H&R Block (HRB) in 2005. And in between those items on his CV is a strong hint that he practices what he preaches. When Murray was head of innovation at Intuit (INTU)—the creator of TurboTax, which allows users to e-file—he saw a brilliant idea, borrowed a chunk of it, and made a killing. His book encourages everyone to give it a try. After all, he argues, it worked for Johannes Gutenberg, George Lucas, and the Google guys.

A Business Week Review:

The Good: Practical and simple advice on how to come up with new products and services by cherry-picking, then combining, others’ ideas.

The Bad: Author Murray often repeats his main points—even some of his anecdotes

The Bottom Line: An entertaining, easy-to-read romp through the history of innovation, from Gutenberg to the Google guys, plus a method that appears to actually work.