Have you ever had a sudden burst of inspiration that led you to a new solution to a problem? Do you ever marvel at seemingly impossible modern inventions like the internet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If so, you might wonder how individuals come up with such incredible innovations and how they develop them over time. In Where Good Ideas Come From<\/em>, Steven Johnson explains that good ideas and novel innovations are largely the result of social collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Continue reading for an overview of this fascinating book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In Where Good Ideas Come From<\/em><\/a>, Steven Johnson explains that, for an idea to be good, it must be built upon accumulated knowledge and be put forward at a time when users can conceive of how to use the idea and when the needed resources for the idea are available. Ideas can result from a combination of underlying unfinished ideas fed over time, sudden inspiration, mistakes, and the practice of using other innovations for purposes distinct from their original functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Steven Johnson<\/a> is a best-selling author and theorist who frequently contributes to outlets like The New York Times<\/em> and The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. His other works include Everything Bad is Good for You<\/em><\/a>, Future Perfect<\/em><\/a>, and Enemy of All Mankind<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll examine how good ideas build on previous ones and combine via networking. We\u2019ll also explore how good ideas can be cultivated over time, how they can suddenly be realized through insights, how mistakes lead to new ways of thinking, and how changing the way we use a previous idea or innovation can create a new innovation. Finally, we\u2019ll look at how capitalism<\/a> affects the development of ideas and innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Johnson, good ideas don\u2019t emerge miraculously from nothing. Instead, they build on existing knowledge and ideas. If every writer had to create their own writing system, or if every app developer had to reinvent the internet, we wouldn\u2019t be able to progress as a society and would be stuck with only the most basic ideas. The more we innovate and create, the more we draw on established knowledge to innovate further, enabling us to come up with increasingly advanced ideas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These previous ideas provide platforms of knowledge on which to build. Platforms can be physical\u2014such as a piece of technology like a steam engine or a computer\u2014or conceptual\u2014such as the ideas and knowledge that allowed us to create such technologies. Platforms not only prop up new ideas, but they also provide parameters, or, in the case of the arts, genres. It\u2019s necessary to understand these parameters in order to bend or break them, which allows for greater insight and innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Combining or shifting across platforms of knowledge can open up further opportunities for discovery. Johnson gives the example of how scientists figured out Darwin\u2019s Paradox. This combination of sciences led to a new field called ecosystems ecology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson points out two other hallmarks of the most successful ideas. We\u2019ll look at both hallmarks next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Platforms of knowledge also shape the realm of the adjacent possible<\/a><\/em>. The adjacent possible is a theory developed by Stuart Kauffman that refers to the realm of new ideas that are within reach based on society\u2019s current available information, resources, and abilities. While good ideas can come from outside the adjacent possible, all successfully implemented <\/em>ideas come from within it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ideas developed in the adjacent possible are understandable and achievable at the time they\u2019re created<\/strong>. Those that are developed outside the adjacent possible may be great ideas, but a lack of knowledge or resources makes them unachievable at the time they\u2019re created. Such ideas fail<\/a> but may be developed later when the needed resources become available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To explain the adjacent possible, Johnson discusses the work of the inventor Charles Babbage. In the 1830s, Babbage developed the idea for what would have been the first-ever programmable computer. Because of the resources and knowledge available to him, the computer would have been made entirely of mechanical parts and would have been incredibly slow if he had managed to build it. The idea failed because it was outside the realm of the adjacent possible, but a century later, our cumulative knowledge and resources had widened the adjacent possible to encompass this invention, and modern computers were then developed using the same basic blueprints that Babbage had created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of the adjacent possible helps explain the phenomenon of \u201cthe multiple.\u201d This is a historical trend in which the same novel idea is discovered by multiple people working independently of each other. If different people are working from the same knowledge base, then the realm of possibilities for their work will be similar, even if they aren\u2019t working together, because they\u2019re all limited to the base knowledge\u2019s adjacent possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Johnson, having networks<\/em> of ideas that build and connect with each other is also essential to come up with good ideas<\/strong>. Networks can take many different forms, including physical communities, online spaces, or anything that facilitates collaboration between people. They can even include the networks that comprise our own brains. Johnson suggests that, the more people who are involved in a network, the more effective they\u2019ll be at spawning and promoting ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most important networks Johnson discusses is the city. He points out that, in the age of the hunter-gatherer, we remained in small groups that rarely met or collaborated with each other. In these environments, even if some lone individual had a great idea, it was rarely shared widely or improved upon by others since people had no means of record-keeping. After the development of agriculture, we began to gather in large groups, forming communities that grew into cities. These cities led to a great confluence of different thoughts and perspectives, and importantly, the storing and recording of ideas through common knowledge or written language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent years, the internet has proven to be an effective tool for networking ideas, as well. The internet provides immediate access to vast amounts of information and, unlike city networking, it can be accessed no matter where you are geographically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We rely on networks between people, but we also rely on networks within our brains. The brain consists of a hundred billion neurons with 100 trillion connections between them. Like a network of people, the power of these neural networks comes from the connections rather than the individual neurons. These connections and their ability to change and form new patterns\u2014an ability known as plasticity\u2014are the key to the mind\u2019s ability to learn and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that you understand how ideas form, you can apply that understanding to better harness the upcoming forms of ideation. We\u2019ll now look at some of the processes that go into the formation of good ideas, including the development of unfinished ideas over long periods of time, sudden insights<\/a>, mistakes, and exaptation<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most ideas take a long time to develop and require a lot of patience. They begin as suspicions, hunches, or ideas that aren\u2019t yet complete, and often, they need to be combined with other people\u2019s unfinished ideas to take shape\u2014which is part of why networks are so important. Ideas like this can brew for years or decades before they find the other ideas that complete them and push them into the realm of the adjacent possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson distinguishes these unfinished ideas from gut instincts. While both can act as underlying ideas that lead to something greater, gut instincts are immediate and fast. Unfinished ideas or hunches begin with an inexpressible suspicion that there is something greater at play in a situation or problem you\u2019re considering, and they don\u2019t lend themselves to quick decisions like gut instincts do. Instead, they remain in the back of your mind for long periods of time, slowly connecting to new things you\u2019re learning and eventually coalescing into a whole idea that\u2019s greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s easy to lose track of these long-term partial ideas. They can be nebulous and ill-defined, which makes them easy to forget. To keep track of these ideas, Johnson recommends that you record each one that you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson also notes that people who bring ideas like this to fruition are often able to develop them as part of their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To encourage this type of innovation, companies like Google deliberately set aside certain percentages of their employees’ work time (20%, specifically) for them to pursue ideas that interest them outside of their specific roles at the company. While most of the ideas developed during this time are never used by the companies, they often lead to highly profitable innovations<\/strong>. In Google\u2019s case, their tools AdSense and Gmail both came from ideas developed during this designated time. And, the company\u2019s vice president of Search Products and User Experience has said that ideas created during this designated time account for more than half of the company\u2019s new products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes ideas can click suddenly into place as a result of inspiration or insight<\/strong>, writes Johnson. <\/strong>Rather than coming together purely from steady, incremental development, an idea that you\u2019re mulling over can be spontaneously completed by an epiphany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson explains how the brain goes through periods of neural synchronization\u2014called neural phase locking\u2014that alternate with periods of chaos. During neural phase lock, the brain\u2019s neural networks are firing simultaneously at the same frequency. In contrast, there are other periods where all the neurons are firing completely out of sync with each other. During these periods of chaos, scientists believe the brain is making links and associations that it wouldn\u2019t normally make, resulting in new ideas and connections. Research into neural phase locking in children showed that individuals varied in the amount of time their brains spent in each phase and that longer periods in the chaotic phase correlated with higher IQs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The brain also makes new links and connections when dreaming or daydreaming. Dream states are also states of neural chaos, where the brain triggers memories and thoughts at random that cause us to dream\u2014and sometimes result in moments of brilliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, Johnson suggests that technology can help us make sudden insights<\/strong>. He describes an indexing software that he uses called DEVONthink that helps him catalog information and search for it with an algorithm that detects not only verbatim search terms but also terms related to what he\u2019s searching (like returning results including the word \u201cwaste\u201d when he searches for the word \u201csewage\u201d). He describes how this tool has given him insights that he doesn\u2019t think he could have achieved otherwise and suggests that these insights weren\u2019t solely his own but were instead the result of collaboration between two intelligences: his own, and the software\u2019s artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google can provide a similar collaborative search function to DEVONthink but with the added benefit of being able to draw from the entirety of the internet\u2019s information. Johnson points to criticism of internet search engines by writers who suggest that it has ended the practice of going to the library, browsing the shelves, and pulling out books that interest you at a glance. However, Johnson points out that this wasn\u2019t a practice that everyone\u2014or even most people\u2014made a habit of. While their searches are now curated by internet filters\u2014which he says are actually beneficial since they block out all the irrelevant search results\u2014more people are searching the internet than ever browsed libraries in the way these critics lament.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOverview of Where Good Ideas Come From<\/em> by Steven Johnson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How Ideas Develop<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Developing Ideas That Are Within Reach<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Networking to Create Better Ideas<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Developing Ideas Over Time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Making Workplaces Conducive to Idea Formation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Creating Ideas From Sudden Insights<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Collaborating With Technology<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Cultivating Sudden Insights<\/h4>\n\n\n\n