Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors

A great read. I found myself constantly jotting notes in the margins as I read it because it caused me to think of new ideas in my business. I find many business books suffer from having 20 pages of content that they fluff out to 200 pages to justify the price. In this case, I didn't want the book to end. I highly recommend Juice.

Schwartz brilliantly explains "the creative fuel that drives world-class inventors" while explaining, also, that each of them followed a process by which to create possibilities. More specifically, by pinpointing problems to be solved, recognizing what are usually interconnected patterns, "channeling chance" (i.e. serendipity), eliminating or transcending boundaries, detecting barriers inorder to remove or overcome them, recognizing and applying appropriate analogies, visualizing probable results, embracing each failure as a learning opportunity, "multiplying insights" as they reveal themselves, and at all times "thinking schematically" (i.e. cohesively). Yes, that's a mouthful but essentially what the process of invention involves. It bears striking similarities with how the human mind functions. Here is a brief excerpt from Schwartz's Prologue: "The brain's hundreds of billions of neurons, or nerve cells, fire signals across tiny gaps known as synapses. These neurotransmitter signals travel across billions of pathways, often making new connections along the way. One of the mind's many astounding feats is that this network of neural circuits can operate and grow while consuming only a quarter of the electrical power that drives a modern microprocessor, or about twenty watts. This internally produced electricity is our juice." All of the inventors whom Schwartz discusses in this book channeled this "juice" the right way. By making new and unexpected connections, they produced that special form of creativity known as invention. According to Nikola Tesla (the inventor of alternating current), "cognitive LEDs" (i.e. the electrical energy of invention) races through both the mind and heart. In common parlance, this is often referred to as a "rush": forces of intellectual and emotional energy achieve together what Joseph Schumpeter once described as "creative destruction." This is precisely what Schwartz has in mind when noting that by "isolating a problem in a new way, by redefining it, by focusing it down to something more specific than meets the average eye, the inventor constructs a new possibility where none was thought to have existed." Among the inventors whom Schwartz discusses, those of greatest interest to me are Woody Norris, Alexander Graham Bell, Jay Walker, Lee Hood, Carl Crawford and Kevin King, Dean Kamen, and Ron Katz. Here are brief excerpts about four of them: Woody Norris: He "was engaging in a common habit of inventive engineering: taking a technology of technique that works in one domain -- in this case Dopler radar detection of aircraft or weather patterns -- and then repurposing it for a new problem space. Was Norris the first inventor to think of this basic idea of diagnostic ultrasound? Hardly. But he imagined the possibility without knowledge of other efforts. Throughout history, most epochal inventions have been born in a rush of nearly simultaneous discovery." (page 18) Alexander Graham Bell: After a series of parti

This book is a delight to read. The author summarizes his interviews and research of noted inventors and concludes that there are eleven secrets to their inventions. These become the chapters in his book: 1) Creating Possibilities, 2) Pinpointing Problems, 3) Recognizing Patterns, 4) Channeling Chance, 5) Transcending Boundaries, 6) Detecting Barriers, 7) Applying Analogies, 8) Visualizing Results, 9) Embracing Failure, 10) Multiplying Insights, 11) Thinking Systematically. I found these chapters to be the most interesting: Visualizing Results, Applying Analogies and Thinking Systematically. The book is interesting to read because the author weaves research into invention with interesting interviews with active inventors. Here's an example on visualization, talking with Stephen Jacobsen, Sarcos Research, who runs an invention firm specializing in robotics: "... he begins painting word pictures in rapid-fire succession that illustrate how his creations work. He is the kind of man who wouldn't seem outof place zipped up in a silver jumpsuit as the scientific captain on a spacestation orbiting the galaxy... Like many of his peers, Jacobsen collects inventions from the past. In his case, especially, these props serve as inspirations for thinking visually... Jacobsen is more interested in perceiving problems and quandaries firsthand - unburdened by the knowledge of prior approaches -- and then visualizing a new idea on his own." Thus, each chapter develops an important trait of inventors and then illustrates just how that trait is used to invent. He illustrates each chapter with two or three inventors. There is little repeat in the choice of inventors. I found all of the interview material most intriguing. The book ends with a detailed bibliography. But much of the really interesting material came from his interviews with living inventors. This is a delightful, interesting, important and well-written book. Required for anyone interested in invention and technology. John Dunbar Sugar Land, TX

As a filmmaker researching a documentary about innovators and inventors, I bought this book after hearing the author speak on NPR. Having recently spent time with a famous inventor I was intrigued to learn more about what made people like him "tick", which seemed to be the subject "Juice" was attempting to tackle. Imagine my joy when I saw the name of the man I met listed in the inside cover as one of the people Evan Schwartz chose to study in this incredibly informative, inspiring and easy to read book. Choosing to explain through example, Schwartz brings to the forefront the incredible stories of some of the most fascinating thinkers (and doers) living today, most of them completely unknown to the general public. In case after case the building blocks of innovation come to life in compelling fashion and it is not long before the reader concludes, as guided by the author, that behind the seeming randomness of invention is a systematic process that can be studied and emulated. Through meticulous (and probably very fun) research, Schwartz has discovered a through-line in the lives of great inventors froma variety of disciplines that serves to explain or at least illuminate a process that has heretofor been largely ignored. At the very least, if similar research already existed, it has not been made nearly as accesible or compelling. The book is also amazingly up to date and does a great job of leading you toward some pretty profound realizations about our potential future and the kind of people who will help guide us into it. There are few stones left unturned, including obvuoius icons of our history like Bell, Edison, Goodyear, Ford, Farnsworth (whom the author has written another book about that I look forward to reading) and others. Lastly, as someone who has always feared that the sparks of innovation firing within me are doomed to be stifled by the conventions of everyday life, this book (more than others I've read) allowed me to identify profoundly with many of the peculiar processes and tendancies identified by the author. This was an unexpected bonus that accompanied an otherwise fulfilling education and opened a door I look forward to diving through hence forth. Given that one of his key arguments is that many people can nurture the part of our brains that lead to innovative thinking and invention once they understand how and why it works, I imagine many other readers will be equally stimulated.

I've read many books on innovation and this one was the best I've read. Schwartz engrosses you by weaving past and present, across domains as varied as agriculture and e-commerce, isolating the common techniques that great inventors use to overcome the obstacles to innovation. The book is a great combination of science history and management insight. You might see Harvard B-School as the publisher and think "ugh, dry business tome, better wait for the digest version" :-) That couldn't be further from the truth!! Without spoiling it, I'll simply say that there are great personal stories and wonderfully light moments. He has a style that is engaging and he switches between stories like a good film director. As an entrepreneur, I found myself sympathetically rooting for each of the innovators profiled, including several I had never heard of. I think it will appeal to: - business executives (e.g., leaders of product teams, who having read Clayton Christensen, are now striving to stimulate innovation in their organizations) - science history buffs (e.g., fans of James Burke's works such as Connections and Pinball Effect) - fans of his previous books (e.g., Last Lone Inventor about Philo Farnsworth's invention of television) In short, the author cracks the mystery that is "innovation" through a series of in-depth looks at the people, places, and circumstances that led to their inventions. Highly recommended!!