“Say Everything” describes a remarkable chapter in the history of communication that leads not only to YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia but also to the transformation of corporate and government communications. Words: 701

In further edited excerpts from the original review*Stephen Baker (www.BusinessWeek.com) goes on to say:

Scott Rosenberg writes gracefully and appears to have researched thoroughly. His book may be a bit heavy in detail, historical and technical, for a general interest audience but many bloggers are sure to relish the history of the drama they’ve stepped into. I certainly learned a lot.

It all began in late January of 2001, in the depths of the dot-com crash, when a San Francisco startup called Pyra Labs ran out of money. The co-founder of the company, a young Nebraskan named Evan Williams, scraped together $40,000 in new funding and moved Pyra’s servers into his apartment permitting the company’s 100,000 registered customers (and counting) to keep using Pyra’s service, Blogger, to publish their online journals, or blogs. A year later, Blogger had 700,000 subscribers.

Whether sharing cookie recipes or commenting on weapons reports from Iraq, those writers were constructing a significant new form of grassroots media. Blogging turned traditional publishing on its head, allowing anyone with a computer and modem (or even a smartphone) to gain a global voice for free. By 2003, Williams was able to sell his business to Google for a lucrative pile of pre-IPO stock. Three years later he and his partners launched yet another tool for global publishing, the micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

Rosenberg introduces readers to pioneers such as Justin Hall. A Swarthmore College dropout who was itching to share, Hall in 1993 began publishing details of his life and linking to things he was finding online, including bootleg music and porn. He established a cult readership. It quickly became apparent that if Justin Hall could publish his stuff, everyone else could, too.

Could blogging be a business? Entrepreneurs such as Nick Denton, a former Financial Times journalist, would lead the way. Denton hired journalists to post on sites such as Gawker, for gossip aficionados, and tech gadget blog Gizmodo. He established an early model: lots of attitude, frequent posting, strong focus—and entry-level pay. Then came rival Jason Calacanis, who launched the blog network Weblogs (TWX), luring away some of Denton’s stars with equity stakes. Enter Arianna Huffington in 2005 with another model: persuading bloggers to labor for free—while boosting their brands—as contributors to her popular Huffington Post.

The blog wars make for fun reading. The impact for society comes from the stream of eyewitness reports and opinions flowing onto Web pages. As customers and employees blog, corporations lose any hope of controlling news as they used to and push instead to influence it. And as we see in the streets of Iran, angry voices carry around the world and construct their own compelling narrative, even when dictators censor the press.

It’s easy to focus on stupid or trivial blogs and dismiss the lot of them but as more people add their voices every day, Rosenberg writes, “saying that ‘ninety percent of blogs are crap’ begins to feel misanthropically close to saying ‘ninety percent of people are crap.’ ”

He quotes an American Army major, Andrew Olmsted, who left an entry to be posted after his death, which came near Sadiya, Iraq, in January 2008. “The ability to put my thoughts on (virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them has been marvelous,” Olmsted wrote, “even if most people haven’t agreed with them.”

Thanks to the technology and media Rosenberg describes, all of us have that same marvelous power to reach out to the rest of the world. It’s astonishing how quickly the change has come.

*http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_30/b4140074545626.htm

Editor’s Note:
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This book encourages everyone to cherry-pick the ideas of others on their way to success – after all, it worked for Johannes Gutenberg, George Lucas, and the Google guys. Words: 670

In further edited excerpts from the original review* Reena Jana (www.BusinessWeek.com) goes on to say:

Murray uses personal anecdotes and scores of examples to build the case that cherry-picking the ideas of others is a vital part of the research and development process.

For instance, Google is heralded for borrowing concepts from library science to improve Web searches. Gutenberg’s printing press borrowed from the gear used by winemakers and olive-oil producers. George Lucas? It’s a longish list. Such nuggets spice up Murray’s six steps, which start with defining the problem you want to solve, then searching for solutions used by others with similar problems, followed by a process of refining the material you gather.

As he lays out his method, he raises the stakes on innovative thinking. It’s more than just a competitive advantage. These days it’s a lifeline. “The need for innovation and creativity becomes more and more important as … product and career life cycles become shorter,” Murray writes.

In a sense, this book is an idea Murray borrowed from himself (and Intuit, again). In the early 2000s he was asked to create an innovation training program for the company. The goal: a clear, easy-to-replicate process for creative thinking. After studying hundreds of inventive thinkers, from Charles Darwin to Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, he concluded that the quickest and most reliable path to invention is paved with appropriated ideas. That may not strike you as terribly original, but Murray’s method involves mixing and matching the concepts of others, ideally from disparate fields, to arrive at something new.

Murray himself is a study in reinvention and, despite his résumé, failure. Back in 1999 he passed up a $25 million offer from GE Capital (GE) for the office-equipment financing firm he’d built and opted for a higher offer from a bank. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shut down the overleveraged bank, which Murray doesn’t name, and he was left on the hook for $30 million in new loans signed while he was negotiating the deal. Beyond broke, he spiraled into alcoholism.

After well over a year he rang up the GE executive who tried to buy his company—and who had since moved to Intuit—to ask for help. Murray was initially given a shot at revitalizing the direct-marketing campaign for TurboTax. The idea for doing so came through his mail slot. At that time, AOL (TWX) was sending software upgrades to customers on CDs. Murray advised Intuit to send past customers disks with updated TurboTax software on them. If they paid online or on the phone, they could unlock it. Suddenly the response rate to Intuit’s direct marketing jumped from 15% to 60%.

But Murray keeps his personal history from playing too big a part. Instead, Jobs pops up a lot, even though Murray, who’s clearly an admirer, didn’t interview him. He relies on often familiar stories to portray Jobs’ notorious ability to co-opt the ideas of others. “Sadly, I’ll never be Steve Jobs, and neither will you, but I can simulate the way he thinks even if it isn’t inherent in me. And you can, too,” he writes.

The strongest advice in the book is Murray’s notion that the best ideas to pilfer are the least obvious. “The farther away from your subject you borrow materials from, the more creative your solution.”

*http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_36/b4145072739717.htm

Editor’s Note:
- The above article consists of reformatted edited excerpts from the original for the sake of brevity, clarity and to ensure a fast and easy read. The author’s views and conclusions are unaltered.
- Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
- Sign up to receive every article posted via Twitter, Facebook, RSS feed or our Weekly Newsletter.
- Submit a comment. Share your views on the subject with all our readers.
- Buy the book below from Amazon. It’s pertinent to this article and inexpensive too.