Decisions, Decisions

Serving as a member of California's top court,Charles W. McCoy Jr. is a celebrated judge of, among others, arecent case in which he reduced by $2.9 billion the $3 billionaward a jury had ordered tobacco company Philip Morris to pay asick smoker. Tough decision, right? No harder than those manybusinesses face every day, argues McCoy in Why Didn't I Think of That?(Prentice Hall Press, $22), an exploration of how to come up withunexpected answers to tough questions. To illuminate histechniques, McCoy produces examples ranging from the strategy Intelused to overtake Motorola to an experiment he employs to persuadelaw students to trust their intuitions.

The book is full of innovative-thinking exercises, checklists,anecdotes, challenges, puzzles and more. For instance, to sharpenyour perceptive powers, McCoy recommends taking a series of objectsranging from pencils to people and describing each in every way youcan think of, including shape, texture, color, function and so on.This is an engagingly ground-level approach to a topic with morethan its share of highfalutin gurus. And it's something anyonecan use to help think of that one idea that could make all thedifference.