On October 29, Professor Barry Nalebuff spoke to SOM and Yale Alumni in Boston about his new book with Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres, entitled Why Not?

He explained how he and Ian Ayres have transformed Robert F. Kennedy's challenge to us -- "to dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'" -- into a framework for developing ideas that can change how we work, live, and govern.

First, Barry used provocative examples from business, law, and everyday life -- the phone rings at 2 AM, it's a fax machine, you need to sleep. How do you stop it? How do you prevent this from ever happening? Then he offered simple methods for generating ingenious solutions to existing problems, and for applying existing solutions to new problems.

Why Not? calls to the optimist in each of us. As Barry says, great ideas are waiting right under our noses. Why not be the one to discover them?