Intuit founder Scott Cook hit on the idea for Quicken financial software after two key observations.First he watched his wife's frustration as she struggled to keep track of their finances. "Often the surprises that lead to new business ideas come from watching other people work and live their normal lives, "Cook explained."You see something and ask,"Why do they do that? That doesn't make sense." Then a buddy got him a sneak peek at the Apple Lisa before it launched.Immediately after leaving Apple headquarters, Cook drove to the nearest restaurant to write down everything he had noticed about the Lisa.Kis observations prompted inisights such as building the graphical user interface to look just like its real-world counterpart (a checkbook,for example),making it easy for people to use it.So Cook set about solving his wife's problem and grabbed 50% of the market for financial Software in the first year.