Steven Berlin Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is so full of smart thinking, fat salient bits, illuminating stories and revelations…so full of deep understanding of the true flux-and-flow of ideas and innovations, and so compellingly written, that we are knocked out. We’ve dog-eared and marked-up our advance copy to remind ourselves of ideas to revisit or blog about. Rather than spin-our-wheels trying to give the gist, we offer this terrific video.

Read Johnson’s book from beginning to end, and/or open it anywhere to find a nugget, like why, for example,

“Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces us to explore.”…

…and why

“Ideas rise in crowds”…

…and just what is

“the adjacent possible”…?

Where Good Ideas Come From will launch on October 5th. You can preorder it at Amazon.

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3 replies on “‘where good ideas come from’”

  1. The video feels a bit like William Kentridge as an information designer… Thanks Sally. It’s fun to “see the process” regarding the idea of process.

  2. And thank you, Pamela, for pointing the way to Kentridge, an artist whose work I’ve never seen before and have been devouring–he’s brilliant. I love the way, just like the video shows, that one thing leads to another, and our connectivity favors the sharing of art and ideas of all kinds.

  3. so much here…love the question…”what are the “spaces” that invite creativity and innovation…

    curiosity
    comtemplation (the slow hunch/incubation)
    community/connection/collision
    creativity/innovation
    etc.

    i ordered the book…great fun! thanks.

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