Who is David Murray?
And why has he written this book?
Today, Dave is the author of Borrowing Brilliance. In the past, however, he’s been an entrepreneur, a scientist, a salesman (selling nuclear weapons),a marketing executive, an innovation leader (for a Fortune 500 software company), a web designer, a CEO, an inventor (he’s got a few patents to his name), a rock climber, skier, a mountaineer (he’s summited Mt. McKinley) , and – now – a writer. At one point in his career, he made millions of dollars from a single, simple idea; at another point he filed for personal bankruptcy protection (unfortunately, in that order). But failure is temporary, he says, just like success. They’re both part of the creative process, both just different stops on the same journey. And besides, you learn from your mistakes, which means Dave’s learned a lot.
He brings a unique and practical perspective to the study of creative thought. In his career, he says, he’s come up with thousands and thousands of ideas. One or two of them, he smugly thinks, have actually been pretty good. One of his best, his publisher says, is his idea about ideas themselves. That’s what’s his book’s about … how to construct a new idea and apply it to solve an important problem. His thesis is simple: That new ideas are constructed out of existing ideas. It’s the cerebral law of physics. And it’s what all creative thinkers do, whether they admit it or not. Brilliance is borrowed, he says. Period. “At least that’s what somebody told me. I didn’t make this shit up myself. I’m not that smart, I just borrowed the idea and wrote a book about it.”
He’s used his ideas (i.e. someone else’s) to start a company from scratch called Preferred Capital and in three years grow it from nothing to one producing millions in profit, tens of millions in revenue, and employing hundreds of people. In 1999, he was offered $50 Million for this company. Unfortunately, he never saw the proceeds, and his company would spiral out of control and force him into bankruptcy. “Ouch,” he said as he hit the floor, “that hurt.” Then he got up, brushed himself off, and set out and to try and do it again. Except this time intent on success. The story of his struggle to reinvent himself, to start over again, provides the narrative spine for his new book Borrowing Brilliance. We won’t tell you what happens, you’ll have to buy the book to find out. Go figure, right?
Dave began his career in 1982 as an aerospace engineer. When he worked on the Space Shuttle, and got confused or lost, he’d say to himself, “Come on, Dave, you can figure it out, it’s not rocket science.” And then he’d realize -- it was -- and get more confused, further lost, and depressed. He worked on the Space Station, the MX Missile, the Delta Rocket and the Space Shuttle. He spent a year in the basement of the Pentagon, working on President Reagan’s Star Wars program as the Senior Manager for Advanced Technologies. “Yea, I was a rocket scientist,” he says, “but after a few years, it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be the next Werner Von Braun.” So, he turned to selling and marketing instead. He represented the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company on Capitol Hill and in the White House, selling nuclear tipped rockets, fighter aircraft, cruise missiles, neutron particle beam weapons and other technically advanced crap designed to scare the shit out of the Soviet Union.
The author (in the center with a clipboard) standing in front of the MX Nuclear Missile.
“It was a crazy time,” he says, “the height of the cold war. We were making bombs at an alarming rate, cranking them out the way Krispy Kreme cranks out donuts. Every Monday, I’d have lunch in the Pentagon courtyard, at a place called the Ground Zero Café. It was at the geometric center of the building and its name eluded to the assumption that one or two Soviet SS71 Ballistic Missiles was aimed right at it. Someone had even painted a bull’s-eye, a target, in the middle of the courtyard, arrogantly taunting the Soviet satellites that flew overhead. I once saw a full bird Colonel walk into the courtyard, pull down his pants, and moon the clear sky above us. Later, someone told me the Colonel and his team were in charge of tracking Soviet satellites and knew exactly when they were overhead taking pictures. I’m sure it must have cracked up the guys in the Kremlin when they developed the film later,” Dave says, “it was Dr. Strangelove shit, for sure.”
After the silliness and fun of making and selling nuclear bombs wore off, Dave quit and became a salesman for a small finance company in Massachusetts. He wanted to become an entrepreneur and realized that starting a weapons or aerospace company probably wasn’t in the cards. “One day I was selling billion dollar aerospace systems in Casper Weinberger’s office (the Secretary of Defense), the next day I was cold calling a dry cleaner in New Hampshire trying to get a meeting and being told to take a fugging hike. It was career/culture shock.” That’s why he calls the first chapter of his new book The Long Strange Trip. It’s not a career path he’d recommend, but it does give him a unique, or well-rounded, viewpoint on the creative process.
After a few years, he realized his dream and started his own company. Direct Capital was a success from the start. Dave devised a clever direct marketing program and used it to grow the company from a one man office to 20 or 30 employees. After a couple of years, he sold the company to his brother and brother-in-law and moved to Lake Tahoe and started his next company, Preferred Capital.
The staff of Preferred Capital on the shores of Lake Tahoe. The author is standing on the far left.
It’s at this point in Dave’s resume that the story gets interesting. It’s also at this point where the plotline for his book, Borrowing Brilliance, begins. So, we won’t ruin the story, you’ll have to buy the book to see what happens. But it goes something like this: Dave starts his next company. He grows it. Makes millions. Is offered $50 Million for it. Then the bank that makes the offer gets shut down by the FDIC. The bank goes under. Dave's company under. And he goes under. So, he’s broke and unemployed. Of course, there’s a lot more to the story, like the quest to re-do it again and reinvent himself. And there’s a lot to be learned, but we’ll save that for the book, too.
There’s one other “resume” point you should probably know, for it best explains why Dave wrote this book. In his quest to redeem himself, the journey back, he spent a couple of years at Intuit, the Silicon Valley software company (Quicken, TurboTax, and QuickBooks). This is important, because it was here that Dave began researching and writing Borrowing Brilliance. You see, Dave was the Head of Innovation and in that role he was responsible for coming up with innovative ideas and teaching other people to come up with them, too. He started thinking about thinking. He studied ideas -- his own and others. He read hundreds of books on creativity and innovation and kept copious notes, filling a dozen notebooks with the things he learned. “It was a search to understand a creative idea and how to construct one.” Using Intuit as his laboratory, bouncing thoughts off of Scott Cook, the founder, he started constructing his own ideas about ideas.
Now, almost ten years later, Dave’s journey, the things he’s learned, and his thoughts on creative thinking are available in a new book being published by Penguin this summer. “I’ve learned two things,” he says, “the first is that the creative process is very simple. The second is, at the same time, it’s incredibly difficult. But, at least it’s no longer a mystery.” Which, in the end, makes it easier for all of us.
The author climbing the southwest face of Half Dome on one of the "50 Classic Rock Climbs of the World". Not bad for a guy who is terrified of heights and subject to vertigo.
The author on the summit of Mt. McKinley in Denali National Park, Alaska. McKinley is the biggest mountain in the world when measured from it's base to its summit.
