Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

• Where good ideas come from
• Many people would go to a coffee house
• Space would be shared
• Ideas would be shared
• What are the environments and space where ideas and innovations are formed
• What is the space of creativity
• History of first cities
• Even the Biological patterns of coral reefs in the ocean floor could be looked at
• Looking for is shared patterns and behaviors
• Certain patterns that we can take to become more creative and innovative
• An idea is a new network of neurons firing off in your brain
• How do we get these?
• Innovation happens by:
• Mashing things together that happened to be around at the time
• Talking to people we run into
• Sharing ideas
• Stitching things together
• Create something new
• Most of the statues and symbols for creating new ideas are a single entity
• A lone figure away from other people
• Really they should be a group of people
• Chaotic environments
• With unpredictable collisions
• People are unreliable when they self report on where they had their good ideas
• Most of the important ideas come from conference between multiple entities
• Many times when discovering errors
• LIquid network
• Different backgrounds, environments bouncing off eachother
• Many important ideas have very long incubation periods
• The Slow hunch
• There are no sudden moments of clarity
• FLASH
• STROKE
• EPIPHANY
• LIGHTBULB
• Feel that there’s a problem
• No proper tools to deal with it
• Hunches can connect with other hunches and speed the process
• Connecting vs Protecting
• Often times we hide our hunches and ideas
• Hiding them shields them from progress
• GPS was born by a congregation of experimenters with technology fiddling around with a radio
• Chance favors the connected mind