BROUGHT TO BOOK: The light bulb is often used to illustrate inspiration but nobody shows where the current comes from. Successful Innovation attempts to bridge the gap because innovation is the latest buzzword in the new economy.

The authors dispute the notion that new ideas appear out of nowhere, as if through some form of osmosis.

They talked to managers and asked them where they got their best ideas, what influenced their decisions and what world view shaped their thinking.

Managers still read a lot, apparently, and a high proportion with creative track records draw lessons from biographies or autobiographies.

Office psychologists won't be surprised to learn that men and women do this differently. Men, in the main, try to exemplify the personal example of the profiled subject. For example, a chilled food producer was inspired by Nelson Mandela to rebuild his business and keep employees threatened with redundancy on salary. Women tend to reflect not only the person being profiled but also the times in which they lived. Reading biographies of notables as diverse as Jane Austen and Albert Speer helped a UK National Theatre executive director see there are different ways of looking at a situation and creative solutions can be found by trying to see more than one.

Successful Innovation stresses the urgency of a cultural revolution in management thinking: people must feel free to come forward with ideas and shoot from the hip. In most of the authors' surveys, getting the idea accepted was more difficult than making it work.

As you would expect from an Economist publication, Successful Innovation has plenty of useful insights. It should interest any manager trying to stay ahead of the competition.

Successful Innovation ... (How to encourage and shape profitable ideas)

By Michel Syrett and Jean Lammiman

The Economist, £20 (UK)