Three Steps for Effective Borrowing
Dave Murray says to look in each of these places:
1. The Opposite Place
– It can inspire a different way of viewing your world
2. A Similar Place
– This helps you to understand the current reality. A similar place can be as simple as a competitor that you might already be watching. But the point is to view it both through your usual lens and the opposite lens and then not to stop here, but to keep going. It’s almost a warm-up exercise.
3. A Different Place
– This is where you’ll find the most impactful material for building new ideas. The different place could be within your own observations, from the experience of others, or from actually going somewhere off of your usual path.
The first step of problem definition and visiting the other places help prepare you to make the most of the different places. This is the step that made me think of The Medici Effect, which I’ll write about later.
How Can Borrowing Build Originality?
If the basic concept seems shaky to you, the best arguments for it lie within the stories that Murray uses in his book, Borrowing Brilliance. That’s where it comes to life.
One you’re probably heard before is that of the assembly line. Henry Ford reportedly borrowed the idea for this manufacturing innovation from a meat packing plant. Applying it to building a crafted and precise machine just wasn’t obvious to other people.
There’s a simple continuum that Murray shows to illustrate his point.
- If you borrow from the same domain – you’re a thief.
- If you borrow from a similar domain – you’re a smart guy.
- If you borrow from a different domain – you’re a creative genius.
Creative Genius Position Open
I must admit that one of the attractions of this theory is that it puts the ability to at least briefly carry the title of creative genius in each of our hands. We don’t have to worry about coming up with an original idea, just creating a farflung combination that hasn’t been applied in that particular way before.
What do you take away from it?
More on Borrowing Brilliance
This is the second of a series of posts interpreting and summarizing the book Borrowing Brilliance by David Kord Murray. Read the rest:
