What kinds of environments and societies give rise to good ideas? How can the average person maximize his odds of coming up with a great idea? These are the questions that Steven Johnson sets out to answer in his new book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, out next week.
Johnson is a prolific non-fiction author; his earlier books include The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World; The Invention of Air: A Story Of Science, Faith, Revolution, And The Birth Of America; and Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. Johnson is good at a lot of things, but especially good at applying modern thinking to historical situations. He tweets here, and has 1.5 million followers.
A central argument of his new book is that good ideas are not the product of lone geniuses, but of connected networks. “[W]hat I would argue, and what you really need to kind of begin with, is this idea that an idea is a network on the most elemental level,” he said in a recent TED talk. “I mean, this is what is happening inside your brain. An idea, a new idea, is a new network of neurons firing in sync with each other inside your brain. It’s a new configuration that has never formed before. And the question is: how do you get your brain into environments where these new networks are going to be more likely to form?”
In the book, Johnson identifies seven patterns that are common to “fertile” environments: “The more we embrace these patterns – in our private work habits and hobbies, in our office environments, in the design of new software tools – the better we will be at tapping our extraordinary capacity for innovative thinking.” He takes readers on a journey that covers the great creative cities to the remote islands where Charles Darwin began to organize his thinking about evolution.
Johnson has agreed to answer your questions about his new book, so fire away in the comments section below. As always, we’ll post his answers in due time.
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Thank you for posting on this valueable topic.
I once heard that people who live in a place with a change of seasons are more productive and I’ve wondered if there is any truth to that.
Darwin produced great ideas but if you believe David Quammen’s account of his life in Song of the Dodo, then Alfred Wallace really should get at least half, if not all the credit for the Theory of Evolution. And he worked much faster than Darwin.
What prescriptions would Mr. Johnson’s thesis offer for reform of the patent system?
if you accept that there is a limit to what the human brain can understand, do you think it possible to run out of new ideas in a field of enquiry?- that is, as we push the epistemic boundaries in an intellectual endeavor, wouldn’t we get to a point where the only ‘new’ ideas would be recycled old ones that were forgotten, but then remembered anew?
Thanks for the interesting topic. I haven’t read the book but wanted to ask a question based on the above snippet.
I wonder if in addition to the environment, the amount of ‘inspirations’ that flow in to an individual is also an important aspect. I always think an idea doesn’t just ‘pop’ , it’s always based on collective inspirations over time.
Wanted to hear your insight on this.
Mr. Johnson:
Do you think inovation needs certain kind of “shelter from competition” to assure an optimal enviroment for new ideas? or do this enviroments tend to emerge from sharp competitive enviroments?
Thank You.
Does your book speak about the subconscious mind and its role, if any, in the area of good ideas.
I am surprised that Mr. Johnson does not reference the work of George H. Mead and William James as they did groundbreaking work on the nature of intelligence and it’s social origin.
J
Dr. James Burke did a great job in tracing the history of innovative invention in his “Connections” series… especially the ones that are considered “great… or subtley effect our daily existance.
It highlights that almost every new good idea is an intellectual morphing of previous ideas, inventions, etc.
A wonderful series. If I was a history teacher it would be required viewin
If this is somewaht off-topic… my apologies.