- “I studied the work of Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School. She is one of the country’s foremost experts on business innovation and she said, “All innovation begins with creative ideas.” Okay, I said to myself, that makes sense, but how do you define a creative idea? What is it? Over time I came up with this simple explanation: A creative idea is one that’s new and useful. A new idea that isn’t useful, I reasoned, isn’t worth much in the business world. I could design a car with square wheels, it would be new and different, but it wouldn’t be of much use. Later I’d come to realize that this definition transcended business, for it also applied to science, entertainment, and even the arts.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 13
- “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others
- “In other words, creative thought is the search for an idea that already exists, not the act of waiting for one to pop into your head.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 14
- “Since ideas are born of other ideas, this creates a fine line between theft and originality. In fact, it was during the inquisition of Isaac Newton, after having been accused of stealing in the creation of calculus, that he successfully defended himself with the confession, “Yes, in order to see farther, I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” In other words, Newton pled guilty to the obvious, that he built his ideas out of the ideas of others.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 15
- “According to Richard Posner, a judge for the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and author of The Little Book of Plagiarism, “. . . in Shakespeare’s time, unlike ours, creativity was understood to be an improvement rather than originality—in other words, creative imitation.” He goes on to explain that “the puzzle is not that creative imitation was cherished in Shakespeare’s time, as it is today, but that ‘originality in the modern sense, in which the imitative element is minimized or at least effectively disguised, was not.” In his book, he explains that the concept of originality and plagiarism arose during the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth century. Before this time, it was unusual for artists, architects, scientists, or writers to sign their work. Innovation and creativity were understood to be collaborative efforts in which one idea was copied from another and evolved through incremental enhancements. The concept of plagiarism didn’t exist. Copying and creating were rooted in the same thing. The person who copied had an obligation to improve the copy, that was it.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 17
- “The Origin of a Creative Idea: Step One: Defining Define the problem you’re trying to solve. Step Two: Borrowing Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem. Step Three: Combining Connect and combine these borrowed ideas. The Evolution of a Creative Idea: Step Four: Incubating Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution. Step Five: Judging Identify the strength and weaknesses of the solution. Step Six: Enhancing Eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 24-25
- “A problem is the foundation of a creative idea.” In other words, a creative idea is built upon the problem one is trying to solve. It’s the starting point.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 34
- “Albert Einstein I read his thoughts: “The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 34
- “Although you’re wired to solve problems, you’re not wired to accurately define them. In the fight for survival, which determined your inherent characteristics, the ability to make a quick decision was more important than the ability to make an accurate one. You’re wired for speed and not precision. Imagine your ancient ancestor observing the rustling of the grass approaching him on the prehistoric savannah. This was either a saber-toothed tiger or the wind blowing the tall grass. The ancestor who made a quick decision to run was the one who survived, passing this trait to you; the one who stayed to determine the source of the rustling grass was more apt to be eaten by the tiger. His genes, and aptitude for problem analysis, were taken out of the gene pool long before modern times. Speed of thought is in your genetic makeup. It served your ancestors well with life-threatening problems, but now causes you to misdiagnose the not-so-life-threatening ones you now face.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 35
- “Observation is the act of studying the production and destruction of patterns. The creative genius recognizes patterns, is always conscious of them in all their glorious forms, and then observes either the making or breaking of them.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 44
- “Alexander Fleming observed a consistent pattern of fungus on the culture dishes he left in his laboratory. Then he noticed the breaking of a pattern, that one dish had a zone around the fungus where the bacteria didn’t seem to grow. First, he noticed the making of a pattern, the fungus, then he recognized the breaking of that pattern, the absence of fungus. He set the dish aside and later used it to isolate an extract that destroyed bacteria. That extract became known as penicillin.” Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others (David Kord Murray) Page 46