BUSINESS & INVESTING, cont’d Borrowing Brilliance By David Kord Murray Gotham Books, $26.00, 293 pages There is nothing new in this world—not a thing, not an idea. And yet, paradoxically, we know that there is always something new because we swim in a never-ending stream of inventive fascination where all around us is a construct of seemingly new ideas. The question is, where does it all come from? David Kord Murray, author of Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others, has the answer: Every single one of the new ideas you come upon is borne out of the old ones. Murray reveals that all the new and exciting and workable ideas are actually nothing more than a product of working through many of the old and tired ideas. The skill is in knowing where to look, how to combine and how to morph previous ideas into new and more useful ones. In Borrowing Brilliance, he provides you with a stimulating six-step process that you can apply to generate truly useful and practical ideas. Along each step of the way, he shares numerous colorful examples of how others have done it. He brings a practical approach to the subject of innovation by explaining the common obstacles to creative thinking and how to break repetitive thinking patterns that impede creativity. And, he feeds you with simple but inspiring strategies for unleash-
Religion The Case for God By Karen Armstrong Knopf, $27.95, 406 pages Amid the hubbub about creationism and intelligent design, Karen Armstrong comes forth with The Case for God, which redirects our attention toward a larger issue that subsumes the current creationism debate. Armstrong asserts that modern brands of monotheism, especially Christianity, have succumbed to a scientific approach to the sacred. For example, modern believers and fundamentalists rely on scripture to prove doctrinal points and defend creationism in much the same way scientists rely on research and data to prove their theories. Moreover, modern religion is flawed partly because it claims certainty of who God is and what God wants— another inheritance from modernity’s scientific approach to knowledge. Ultimate-
ing your creative mind to get your creative juices flowing. While providing the tools to borrowing brilliance, Murray weaves his own dramatic story of how he rebuilt his life and career using the techniques in the book. His engaging voice and his personal journey, combined with the copious research he conducted on the origins of creativity, make for an entertaining read. Borrowing Brilliance is a fresh and timely book that will help you win in the art of inventively constructing new ideas that you can put to good use today. Reviewed by Dominique James No Size Fits All By Tom Hayes & Michael S. Malone Penguin/Portfolio, $25.96, 259 pages If you are trying to sell a product or a service, you know you will be confronted with two of the most obvious options in letting people know about it: first is through the traditional media which includes print, radio and television, or, the new media which runs the gamut of everything on the Internet—word search, SEO, social media, blog, etc. But, how do you know which of these options that’s available to you will really work? How do you figure out which ones will yield returns? These are the questions that authors Tom Hayes and Michael S. Malone answer in their intriguing new book, No Size Fits All: From Mass Marketing to Mass Handselling. They assert that, to be really effective nowadays, one must return to “handselling writ large.”
ly, Armstrong finds that very “certainty” a crushing liability to one’s search for God. Armstrong argues for recapturing a more ancient, mythological sense of religious experience, when God was more mysterious and unknowable, worship more ecstatic, and spiritual connections more moving. The mysterious and incomprehensible God inspired awe and commitment, and such a view of the sacred depended not on belief in this or that doctrine but on holy ritual and compassionate action. The Case for God is simultaneously a chronological discussion of Western thought and culture. It is not necessarily a light read, but it is worth the work. Even if one’s own religious convictions lie within what Armstrong deems the questionable realm of modernity, the reader can benefit greatly from her solid research and astute observations, which respectfully challenge recent tradition and potentially refine one’s own convictions. Reviewed by Suzanne Christensen
What does this mean and what’s a marketer to do? Businesses must find and cultivate the right online societies, gradually winning their trust, earning their loyalty, and heeding their feedback. The key, according to Hayes and Malone, is to take a “no size fits all” approach: bottom-up instead of top-down, personal rather than public, subtle rather than full frontal. Once a marketer has been accepted by a group of people, the members will expect to receive rich benefits that will then motivate them to spread the word. In short, “marketing is now membership.” To illustrate this point, the authors draw on a number of case studies—from Tila Tequila to Nintiendo’s Wii to the Ron Paul presidential campaign—to show how the smartest players are already navigating the new world of marketing. They also cite examples from Apple, Google, and other tech giants who are thriving today. They offer guides to the paradoxes of today’s world: simultaneously global and personal, vast and small, open and private, futuristic and oldfashioned. If you want to understand the whys and wherefores of reaching out to and targeting the right groups among the more than 2 billion people online, it will do you a lot of good to study Hayes and Malone’s No Size Fits All. Reviewed by Auey Santos The Pursuit of Something Better By Dave Esler and Myra Kruger Esler Kruger Associates, $15.95, 276 pages David Esler and Myra Kruger’s The Pursuit of Something Better is a two-in-one story. It is a story of the transformation of U.S. Cellular, a mid-sized wireless telecommunications provider, from a thoroughly ordinary
Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI By Tracey Rowland Oxford University Press, $17.95, 232 pages With the election of Benedict XVI many people believed he would move the Church in a different direction than John Paul II, and attempt to undo the reforms of Vatican II. Tracey Rowland delves beyond the surface and gives us a portrait of a man who is not that different from John Paul II, he just arrives at his conclusions in a different philosophical way. In Ratzinger’s Faith, Rowland looks at theology of Benedict XVI and his place in the post-Vatican II Church. Rowland finds that while Benedict XVI might be considered a bit more conservative than John Paul II, the changes that Benedict XVI would bring to the Church would not be that radical.
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company (ranked 8th in its industry and in danger of extinction) into an organization that is loved by customers and employees alike, and proved to be a winner. It is also a story of Jack Rooney, the unconventional CEO who had the vision to see the limitations of the traditional business model a decade before it imploded, and the courage to replace it with something much, much better. “The company’s success demonstrates convincingly what we have long known: that there is a better way; that bigger, better, and more lasting results can be achieved by overturning some of the most sacred tenets of the conventional business model; that putting people first works best; and that anyone with the will and the heart can do it.” What’s really impressive about these intrinsically woven stories is how the transformation took place. U.S. Celluar focused on the “soft stuff” so often discredited by conventional business wisdom: values and heart; inspirational and empowering leadership; motivation by values, not fear; ethics and integrity and an insistence on always doing the right thing. Most of all, U.S. Cellular thrived by obsessively putting the customer, and the quality of the customer experience, first. Though this is about a company and its big boss that you may not know about (after See PURSUIT, page 31
This is a book for students of theology, or religious studies, or scholars. It gets technical in examining the many different schools of thought in the Vatican II era, from Thomists and Neo-Thomists to Radical Orthodoxy. Without a solid foundation in religious studies it is difficult to follow all these different schools and their arguments. The complexity does not take away the brilliance of this work. Rowland is able to follow all the different schools and present their beliefs in a readable fashion, so one can follow the debates at Vatican II and not get lost. With this book people will be able to understand Benedict XVI as someone more than just the “guard dog of the Church.” Reviewed by Kevin Winter
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