Inventorship: The Art of Innovation

By Leonard M. Greene

Book Overview

"From this lively and personal account, we learn that we can all practice inventorship to great advantage-measured either in gold or pleasure, or perhaps both!"-From the Foreword by Walter Cronkite

"Inventorship is truly the stuff from which the future will be molded. Giving us an insight into the everyday thought processes of great inventive minds, Greene's wonderful collection of stories and ideas is a model for each of us in the art of inventiveness."-Pat Hallberg, Executive Director, National Inventors Hall of Fame

"This entertaining and well-written work educates without pain and motivates the reader to learn more. It should be widely read not only by business people and entrepreneurs, but by young people, their parents, and their teachers. The lesson: Inventorship is for everyone and can change lives for the better."-Joseph N. Hankin, President, Westchester Community College

"After all the scholarly books and articles about innovation and the entrepreneurial process by theorists, how refreshing it is to hear from a real live inventor holding hundreds of patents in fields as diverse as aeronautics, sailing, chess, and skiing! He has even invented a word, 'inventorship', to describe the process and guide us through dozens of examples. A very useful book."-John Diebold, Chairman, The JD Consulting Group, Inc.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471414077
• ISBN13: 9780471414070
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Great for all ages

This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn how to apply creative thinking, imagination, and "lateral thinking" to their lives and work. It is suitable for anyone, but would be best for children age 10 and older, and adults. The author has lived an amazing life, and filled this book with stories of how he has changed the world, and the people around him. This is a great book for someone looking to find new solutions to old problems, or just looking to "spice things up." There should be a web site where people can share ideas that are stimulated by this book.

Imagination and Necessity equals Invention

From the beginning of Leonard Greene's book, "Inventorship, the Art of Innovation", Walter Cronkite writing in the Foreword, writes about one of my favorite writers of yesterday. Cronkite tells the reader a World War Two incident involving a reporter friend of his, Jimmy Cannon. Cronkite and the other American reporters could not get by the Russian Guards because they had no proper ID. Cannon got by the Russian Guards and spent two days with them before returning to Cronkite and the American Third Army. The Question was "How did Cannon do it?" Leonard Greene provides the answer for his readers in his book: think about the problem at hand, and use "the art of innovation." Jimmy Cannon's solution: thinking and innovation. Cannon showed the Russian Guards "his Texaco credit card with the oil company's big red star on its back.The Guards couldn't read English, but the soviet symbol was enough, and pass him through they did." Leonard Greene's new book is full of wonderful ideas of how inventions come into being. He proves in an intelligent and interesting way that necessity is not necessarily the the only mother of invention; "Imagination is." During World War Two, when this writer was a young sailor. one of the things that amazed me was how in God's name did those planes take off and land on aircraft cariers, especially, the carriers we called the "baby carriers." Leonard's Inventions/solutions: Stall Warning Devices for landing; speed bumps at the end of the runway for take-offs. The Elder President Bush knows their value from his WW11 South Pacific flying days. Leonard Greene's book is facinating reading; it should be required reading with Peter Drucker's books in University/College Business Schools.I give Greene's book the Highest Recommendation.

Very interesting stories from a prolific inventor

If you are at all interested in the invention process then you'll should get this book to read on the actual processes that an inventor went through in invention after invention.At first I thought the author was a little egocentric... talking about all of his inventions. Then I realized that he was truly a profilic inventor. His method of telling us about the invention process was to illustrate each of the methods he used with real stories of inventions. Stories that happened (mostly) to him.It is very easy to read, and the author went out the way to get an artist to support his points with illustrations. As I read the book I became intrigued with all of his inventions. After a while I started saying to myself... "Gosh, I can't believe he invented this under those conditions."Particularly interesting was his analysis of what the people on the Titanic could have done to save the ship.I think there are better academic books about the invention process out there... but there are few that offer a look inside the mind of someone who invented so many products.John Dunbar