This week, the world lost a great innovator, Keith Duckworth.
An engineer by training, Duckworth was one half of the vaunted firm Cosworth, designers of the paradigm-shifting DFV, which changed the face of motor racing and brought home 155 race victories. Funded as a venture by Ford, the DFV acted as a modular platform around which indepdendent designers could, for the first time, create Formula 1 cars which could compete with factory efforts from the like of Ferrari.
Duckworth was one of those fantastic engineers who, by embracing the realities of the business context they operate within, turn mere ideas into market-dominating innovations.
I used your phrase in this blog
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001156.html