PDF Summary:Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson

Have you ever had a sudden burst of inspiration that led you to a new solution to a problem? Or have you ever marveled at seemingly impossible modern inventions like the internet? If so, you may wonder how individuals are able to come up with such incredible innovations and how they develop them over time. In Where Good Ideas Come From, best-selling author and theorist Steven Johnson explains how good ideas grow from minor inklings to groundbreaking inventions, and how you can use this knowledge to come up with the best ideas possible.

In our guide, we’ll explore how good ideas grow from previous knowledge and networks. We’ll also look at how hunches lead to full-fledged ideas, often as a result of sudden insights, and how mistakes and the repurposing of other ideas can lead to new ones. Finally, we’ll compare Johnson’s ideas with ideas from other authors, contextualize them in other fields, and add tips for putting Johnson’s recommendations into practice.

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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’re considering, and they don’t 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’re learning and eventually coalescing into a whole idea that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

(Shortform note: Other experts make less of a clear distinction between hunches and gut instincts, suggesting that gut instincts may actually be responsible for the “inexpressible suspicion” that Johnson says sparks a half-formed idea. They propose that gut instincts are vital for making judgments and decisions, both of which are necessary aspects of the development and refinement of unfinished ideas. However, some experts caution against relying too much on gut instinct to make decisions, as it can cause us to fall back on hidden biases and limited ideas.)

It’s 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 every one that you have.

(Shortform note: Recording every idea you have immediately is not always feasible, especially considering our greatest moments of inspiration often occur when we are engaged in activities like showering. To remember these insights, you can take steps to improve your memory such as getting exercise and good sleep or using mnemonic devices. If you’ve already forgotten an idea, you can try retracing the thought process that led you to it or even physically retrace your footsteps to trigger your memory of the idea.)

Making Workplaces Conducive to Idea Formation

Johnson also notes that people who bring ideas like this to fruition are often able to develop them as part of their careers. For example, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, spent his life—starting in childhood—cultivating the idea for this invention. Part of the reason he was able to develop it fully is because the Swiss lab he worked for, CERN, allowed him to use work time to develop it.

(Shortform note: Berners-Lee recognizes the importance of having the time, resources, and previous knowledge available to create his groundbreaking innovation, and today he works with the World Wide Web Foundation to help provide others with these resources by making access to the web a basic right. This idea of open access to information was the foundation of his invention and continues to guide his work.)

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. In Google’s case, their tools AdSense and Gmail both came from ideas developed during this designated time, and the company’s 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’s new products.

What Really Gets Done During “Innovation Time”?

Some Google employees have suggested that the 20% time practice actually leads them to perform 120% of their normal work because they’re still expected to accomplish their full workload in the time they’re not spending on innovative ideas. Critics have also suggested the company may no longer be using the practice (though the company says it is) since, as of 2020, there hadn’t been any notable new products developed since 2014.

Still, experts recommend “innovation time” as an effective innovation strategy. Businesses would have to be willing to accept a potential reduction in overall productivity, but since research suggests that the average worker is only productive for about three hours per day anyway, they might find that the same amount of work is still getting done and employees are using time to innovate that they would have otherwise spent browsing the internet or on social media.

Creating Ideas From Sudden Insights

Sometimes ideas can click suddenly into place as a result of inspiration or insight, writes Johnson. Rather than coming together purely from steady, incremental development, an idea that you’re mulling over can be spontaneously completed by an epiphany.

(Shortform note: The feeling of having an idea click into place from an epiphany can be extremely satisfying and often causes people to feel grateful for the insight. Experts recommend practicing introspection and opening your mind up to personal change in order to prompt more epiphanies.)

Johnson explains how the brain goes through periods of neural synchronization—called neural phase locking—that alternate with periods of chaos. During neural phase lock, the brain’s 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’t 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.

(Shortform note: Phase-locking and its effects on the brain are not fully understood, but research suggests that it facilitates greater communication between brain areas, which can make it easier to “train” your brain. While the chaotic states outside of neural phase-locking are greatly conducive to creativity, phase-locking may enable you to focus and learn more easily. Some scientists are working to create music that can induce a state of neural phase-locking, which they believe will help people focus and may one day replace medication for conditions such as ADHD.)

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—and sometimes result in moments of brilliance. Johnson explains, for example, that German scientist August Kekulé had a sudden insight during a daydream that enabled him to understand the structure of the benzene molecule.

(Shortform note: Research suggests that dreaming and daydreaming facilitate creative thinking by activating the brain’s default network. This is a group of neural structures that activate when you’re resting or doing a passive activity. However, while there is substantial evidence to suggest that the activation of this network produces a creative state, a causal link has not yet been proven, and there is scientific debate about what parts of the brain constitute the default network and what causes them to activate. Additionally, some historians believe that Kekulé didn’t discover this insight while daydreaming but rather stole the idea from two other scientists who were studying the concept.)

Collaborating With Technology

Additionally, Johnson suggests that technology can help us make sudden insights. 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’s searching (like returning results including the word “waste” when he searches for the word “sewage”). He describes how this tool has given him insights that he doesn’t think he could have achieved otherwise and suggests that these insights weren’t solely his own but were instead the result of collaboration between two intelligences: his own, and the software’s artificial intelligence.

(Shortform note: The continued advancement of artificial intelligence technology is further enhancing the technological collaboration that Johnson describes. Employers are encouraging workers to use artificial intelligence to not only access information but to use its suggestions for possible ways to apply that information. Additionally, while human intelligence continues to be the best source of creativity, artificial intelligence technology is also beginning to gain what some call “artificial imagination,” as AIs are being created that can generate unique images and text based on human input. Some have even suggested that we should begin crediting computers as inventors when they contribute to patentable innovations.)

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’s 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’t a practice that everyone—or even most people—made a habit of. While their searches are now curated by internet filters—which he says are actually beneficial since they block out all the irrelevant search results—more people are searching the internet than ever browsed libraries in the way these critics lament.

(Shortform note: In browsing a library, your interests and curiosities act as search result filters, but with internet searches, filters aren’t the only aspect of search engines that help curate your results. While a filter merely blocks out results that don’t fit your search criteria, search engine algorithms use a huge number of criteria to specifically seek out results that match not only your query, but also relate to other criteria including your search history, the reliability or authority of a site, and site traffic. However, some results may be boosted over others based on less relevant criteria—for instance, YouTube is given priority in Google searches over other results, which may be because YouTube is owned by Google.)

Cultivating Sudden Insights

To put yourself in a state that promotes sudden insights, Johnson recommends taking a walk or a bath. These activities take your mind off of your daily tasks and put you in a more associative state, letting your unconscious mind make those important connections.

(Shortform note: The phenomenon of getting sudden insights during activities like baths or walks is known as the shower principle. However, some experts caution against giving too much credence to ideas generated during these activities, suggesting that they can be so exciting you may overlook practical limitations and fail to realize they’re unfeasible or unachievable.)

Another way to open yourself up to sudden insights is to take in as much new information as you can through reading or other means. Johnson notes that a flaw in this process is that it’s easy to forget what you’ve learned from these sources if you’re only taking in a little bit of information each day. He points out that people like Bill Gates take annual reading vacations, where they take a week or more to deep dive into books they’ve added to their reading list, allowing them to absorb and process all the new information in a concentrated period of time. Johnson suggests that it may benefit workplaces to allot time for such vacations since they can be so beneficial in creating new ideas.

(Shortform note: Reading vacations may be especially productive if you’re reading physical books rather than doing research on the internet. Experts suggest that we’re often much more distracted when reading online because of the prevalence of hyperlinks in text, which causes a break in our concentration as we decide whether or not to click the link. There are also other issues like frequently pausing our reading to check email or attend to some other task. Setting aside large chunks of time to just take in information from physical books can greatly enhance your concentration and retention.)

Forming Ideas by Making Mistakes

Johnson argues that mistakes can lead to better ideas and greater innovations. Many inventions throughout history have been the result of mistakes, including penicillin, the daguerreotype, and the pacemaker. He suggests that making mistakes and then exploring why those mistakes happened makes people smarter. Mistakes open us up to new ways of thinking and prompt us to explore additional ideas in the adjacent possible.

(Shortform note: Research suggests that you learn more from mistakes if you believe you can learn from your mistakes, as opposed to believing that your intelligence is fixed and that mistakes are a personal failing. This suggests that learning from mistakes has more to do with your mindset and openness to exploring what went wrong than the simple act of making the mistake itself.)

Johnson also describes a study carried out by Berkeley professor Charlan Nemeth that showed that mistakes in group settings (or networks) cause people to think more flexibly. In the study, a group of participants was shown a series of colors on different slides and asked to list some words they associate with those colors. The vast majority of the associations were predictable, like associating green with “grass.” However, in subsequent studies, actors were added to the group who deliberately identified the colors incorrectly, like saying they saw a blue slide as green. The actual participants then began making much more creative associations, suggesting that adding inaccurate information to the group’s pool of knowledge led to greater creativity. Further studies showed similar results in settings like mock juries.

(Shortform note: While these studies may suggest that it’s beneficial to have someone deliberately play “devil’s advocate” in groups that are coming up with ideas or making decisions, Nemeth has added in her other work that the devil’s advocate—someone who agrees with the majority position but is deliberately drawing attention to alternative arguments—is not as effective at prompting different types of thinking as someone who genuinely believes in the minority position. In fact, Nemeth’s research suggests that the devil’s advocate position can actually reinforce the majority position rather than eliciting dissent.)

Johnson notes that even evolution makes use of errors to improve a species. Mutations, which are essentially errors in DNA, create changes in an organism, and if those changes are beneficial to its survival, they’re passed down to its offspring. The majority of mutations are either neutral or harmful, but some push a species into a new realm of the adjacent possible, which is how we went from single-cell organisms billions of years ago to the vast array of diverse species we have today.

(Shortform note: Mutations, like human discoveries, also seem to develop by means of “the multiple,” as research shows that different mutations can lead to the development of the same beneficial trait. In other words, the same features in the adjacent possible can be achieved from different combinations of mutations. Scientists think these “multiple” mutations may be more likely to persist through generations because traits that result from a specific, complex mutation are less likely to occur in different organisms—and thus less likely to be passed down to more offspring—than traits that can result from different combinations of mutations.)

Johnson suggests that organizations that seek to eliminate error are closing themselves off to greater ideas in the adjacent possible. He says that, while the goal shouldn’t be to make mistakes, they should be embraced and allowed to happen. Only then can we truly understand and learn from them.

(Shortform note: In The Five Elements of Effective Thinking, Burger and Starbird go a step further and recommend making mistakes on purpose in order to prompt deeper thinking and exploration of an idea. They note that beating yourself up over a mistake or discouraging yourself or others from making mistakes is unproductive and that you should in fact reward people for mistakes because it shows learning and creativity. They recommend making leaps in logic you know are incorrect and following that idea through to its conclusion to see what other ideas it opens up.)

Innovating Ideas Through Exaptations

Johnson also describes how exaptations—using a tool or trait in a context that’s different from the one it was originally intended for—can lead to innovation. Exaptation is a term from evolutionary biology for when a trait that evolved for one purpose changes function and is used for another purpose. Johnson gives the example of how feathers initially evolved to keep animals warm, but when they began flying, feathers turned out to be a perfect tool to facilitate gliding through the air.

(Shortform note: Some scientists question whether exaptation is actually distinct from adaptation, suggesting that if you trace any given evolutionary trait back far enough, you’ll find that it developed from the coopting of a structure for a function different from its original function. This would make the distinction between adaptation and exaptation arbitrary and irrelevant. Others note that it’s a term that’s not frequently used in scientific literature, possibly because of its unclear definition. They say, however, that it has become more frequently used in fields like the history of technology and innovation studies because of humans’ tendency to consciously apply one idea to different contexts.)

Exaptation plays a large role in media and art. Taking a narrative device like stream-of-consciousness writing and adapting it for film changes its function and creates a new innovation in cinematic storytelling.

(Shortform note: Some experts suggest that the development of art itself was a type of evolutionary exaptation of communication. They note that humans have an innate drive to use symbols to communicate with each other and that the neural networks that developed for this purpose exapted over time to allow us to create and appreciate art.)

Johnson explains that networks such as cities are hotbeds of exaptation because they help connect people with different ideas and cultures. When these differences collide, they lead to greater innovation and more creative ideas. Coffeehouses are an example of exaptation of a physical space in society because, while they were originally created as businesses to sell food and drink, they were quickly exapted into spaces where people could meet and share ideas on a larger and more diverse scale than is possible in the home or workplace.

(Shortform note: The convergence of different cultures is one of the most important benefits of exaptational hubs like cities and coffeehouses. However, some experts suggest that this mixing of cultures can lead to a quashing of good ideas when people clash over cultural differences. Studies show that people who view themselves as open-minded are more prone to this type of ideological shutdown. Participants in these hotbeds should take care not to be overly critical of others with different ideas to avoid the risk of shutting themselves off to these exaptations.)

Capitalism’s Effect on Ideas and Innovation

According to Johnson, good ideas come largely from social interaction and the sharing of knowledge through networks. He points out that, especially in the modern world, there are limits to information sharing, particularly when there is a financial incentive to keep information secret through things like copyright, patents, and intellectual property laws. The competitive nature of capitalism encourages companies to keep their innovations under wraps so that other companies can’t take those same innovations and use them for their own benefit. Johnson suggests that this tendency may limit our innovative ability as a society.

Johnson looks at innovations throughout history and categorizes them based on whether they were market-driven or non-market-driven, and also whether they were created by an individual or by a network of people. Based on his assessment of hundreds of major inventions and innovations throughout history, he sees a shift over time: during the Renaissance, most innovations were non-market-driven and developed by an individual. This trend gradually shifted and today, most ideas are still non-market-driven but are developed by networks. He suggests that this contradicts the capitalist principle that competition and profit motive are the primary drivers of innovation.

He doesn’t use these conclusions to call for a different economic system but instead suggests that we should shift our society toward a more open system of sharing ideas and information, one similar to the way universities and research institutions work—as opposed to corporate R&D labs.

Do We Need a New Business Model for Innovation?

Some companies, such as Nathan Myhrvold’s company Intellectual Ventures, are working to incentivize innovation by turning it into its own profession—the reverse of Johnson’s suggestion to direct innovation away from the market. They argue that if we turn invention into a kind of capital that private-sector investors fund, it will allow inventors to create things based on what would be useful and economically valuable rather than basing innovation on what government or research organizations are willing to fund.

They also suggest that such a model would eliminate the competition between individual patent-holders and corporations and instead would turn them into collaborators. Furthermore, private investors would compete with each other to fund the most useful and valuable ideas that would provide the highest return on their investments.

However, Myhrvold has met with criticism over his ideas, as some suggest his business is now just buying up patents and withholding them from other companies. Critics also question how individuals could afford to devote their time and energy to developing new innovations prior to receiving private sector investment.

The historical trends Johnson notes may be attributable to the increase in user-led innovation, which is when consumers notice a need or deficit in products and create their own solutions to fix that problem. User-led innovation is becoming more and more accessible thanks to advancing technology. Experts note that user-led innovation is often responsible for the most successful ideas, and some are calling for a switch to a holistic approach to innovation that involves interaction between users, companies, and institutions to facilitate the production of the best ideas and inventions.