Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small

Yale professors Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres engage readers in an intriguing oxymoron. They believe invention can be automated. Why Not? outlines a populist high-octane approach to creative problem solving. "We aspire for this book to change the way people think about their own ability to change the world." The authors' ideas and examples--from adopting British water conserving toilets to having telemarketers pay you to listen--bristle with energy, conviction, and occasional loopiness. Their approach upends cliched problem solving models by asking, "What would Croseus (the ancient rich king) do?" They take Edward de Bono's lateral thinking out for a spin, suggesting pay for view television might include a fee for eliminating commercials.

Nalebuff and Ayres are at their best in exploring "Idea Arbitrage," a tool for applying one solution to a host of other problems and yielding day care at IKEA, corporate vanity stamps, and library coffee houses. Some promising concepts, such as the technique of leveraging mistakes to create new solutions, are not as clear as others. Overall, the authors make an entertaining case for the idea that innovators are made and not born. --Barbara Mackoff

Offers guidelines for brainstorming and problem solving in order to solve new problems with existing solutions and to generate new solutions for existing problems.

The notion that innovation can be "routinized" is a perennial theme of business theorists. This engaging primer is more insightful than the usual free-associational, brainstorming protocols. Economist Nalebuff and law professor Ayres insist that "innovation is a skill that can be taught," and distill it into a few rules of thumb, like "where else would it work?" (putting airline data recorders into cars, for example) and "would flipping it work?", which involves gonzo conceptual inversions like students raising their hands to not be called on or "reverse 900 numbers" where telemarketers pay people to accept calls. Leavened with a little economics, game theory, psychology and contract law, the authors' framework furnishes useful heuristics to analyze a host of problems from auto theft to campaign finance reform. The result is an interesting compendium of market-oriented socioeconomic fixes, some intriguing (having HMOs sell their members life insurance as an incentive to keep them alive), and a few improbable (offering Palestinians stock in Israeli companies in exchange for a peace settlement). Their system does not, alas, always live up to its billing as an assembly line for business innovations. Many of the ideas they showcase are culled from other sources, and many, like having video renters rewind before-not after-they watch the tape, amount to trivial wrinkles on established practice. The dream of reducing creativity to a set of automatic procedures, shorn of expertise, trial-and-error, eureka moments and plain old hardthinking remains elusive, but the authors seem to know it when they see it.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The authors, professors at Yale University, have made careers out of creating solutions to everyday problems and bringing new ideas to market. One of their ideas, a naturally brewed, barely sweetened bottled tea called Honest Tea, fills the wide gap between bottled water and the many syrupy-sweet beverages on the market. Confirming the view among many inventors that the process of innovation can be automated, the authors outline four central idea-generating tools that are simple and fun to play around with. Much like solving a brainteaser where the answer should be obvious, these techniques force readers to challenge conventional wisdom. For instance, why not offer a mortgage that automatically refinances itself when rates go down? Why not reverse the 900 number concept and make telemarketers pay you to listen to their sales pitch? Why not make organ donation the default choice for everyone and let people sign only if they want to opt out? Some of their suggestions are a bit heavy-handed, but that's a quibble because here, it's the process that's important. David Siegfried
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"Authors Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres have produced an engaging - dare we say innovative? - guide to stoking creativity." -- The Boston Globe, October 19, 2003

"Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres toss out so many ideas...that it makes you dizzy. And makes you think too." -- New York Times, August 10, 2003

"Golden book of bright ideas." -- Kiplinger's Personal Finance, February 2004

"The authors...offer sensible advice for implementing ideas in a competitive marketplace." -- Harvard Business Review, Ocotber 2003

"The words 'fun' and 'business book' rarely go together. But this book...is the exception." -- CIO Insight, October 2003

Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management, and coauthor of Co-opetition and Thinking Strategically. Ian Ayres is the William K. Townsend Professor of Law at Yale Law School.