Ideawise: How to Transform Your Ideas Into Tomorrow's Innovations

Messrs. Rivkin and Seitel serve up a veritable feast of practical ways to stimulate ideas. A central theme is the importance of borrowing -- and transforming -- existing ideas. Theirs is a sort of modern updating of Horace's definition of creativity as being "A new blend of familiar ingredients." Nice company to keep, guys.

IdeaWise combines business wisdom with fast-moving humor. I found myself highlighting something on just about every page, and having a chuckle or two along the way. This book is very cashew-like: each little nugget is tasty, and you don't want to stop eating them.

Steve Rivkin and Fraser Seitel have written a book that gives you permission to be "creative" by "copying" someone else's ideas. They demonstrate that what may be "new!" and "innovative" in one field can be a tried and true, accepted principle or application in another field. They point out, with great examples drawn from a variety of industries, how "revolutionary" ideas have been, and continue to be, actually "borrowed" from unrelated areas. They demonstrate with numerous examples how the success of the adapted application can surpass the success of the original application. This is not a new concept in some fields; that the synthesis of ideas or perspectives from two different disciplines can lead to some higher concept or value in a third may be well known and taken for granted in some fields, but never applied in so practical and enjoyable a manner as in this book. In a sense, they have "borrowed" and applied dialectics to marketing. Written in a very practical, irreverent and humorous style, Rivkin and Seitel provide the reader with very practical advice about how to generate more and better ideas by increasing your awareness of the world around you. The actually provide step-by-step guidance on things that will work and specific principles that have to be followed to be successful. They led me to a different way of thinking about things, and for the first time in my 50-some years I am actually carrying around a notepad on which to jot down observations that will at some time find their way into my idea-making. I have read many of Rivkin's earlier contributions, and those authored by Trout and Ries, but this is the best-developed and most useful how-to book with which Rivkin has been associated so far. And they picked "Ideas", the topic on which business and cultural growth is rooted. Who can't use this help?

This book has changed my life. I train product managers and have hired expensive consultants --- until I read this book. Now I know the truth. And boy have I learned my lesson. The only "consultants" I'll ever hire again are Rivkin and Seitel!