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    Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
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    Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
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    Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
    Audiobook7 hours

    Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

    Written by Steven Johnson

    Narrated by Erik Singer

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 5, 2010
    ISBN9781101403860
    Unavailable
    Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
    Author

    Steven Johnson

    Steven Johnson is the internationally bestselling author of several books, including How We Got to Now, Where Good Ideas Come From, The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map and Everything Bad is Good for You. The founder of a variety of influential websites, he is the host and co-creator of the PBS and BBC series How We Got to Now. Johnson lives in Marin County, California, and Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and three sons.

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    Reviews for Where Good Ideas Come From

    4/5

    267 ratings34 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Nice conversational read. I added this in my trek through books on innovation and I'm glad I did. Johnson packaged his points very well. He presents that not just good ideas, but evolutionary changes arise from things like the "adjacent possible" - where at any moment many different, but only certain things are possible; where serendipity and error generate those "good ideas"; where exaptation, liquid networks, "slow hunches" and specific platforms germinate and nurture the ideas which we take for granted today. Very little is truly never-been-thought-of-before, flash-like innovation, but the processes of the creation of ideas are the innovation of which Johnson writes. My one beef is the lack of in-text cites...I dislike the form of endnotes without direct references as I read.

      Recommended.
    • 5/5
      While this book is maybe lacking the scholarly precision of a work of science, its message is clear and at least for me easily acceptable. It identifies the key ingredients for innovation and great ideas and is practical and explanatory enough to give the reader ideas to translate them into their environment.The message is that innovation occurs on fertile ground, but as a product of a deterministic process, but rather as a mixture of right ingredients mixed with a good pinch of time.The book is lively written and a pleasure to read. I warmly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Second time listening to the audio book. I really enjoy it.

      Informative. Entertaining.

      This is a great book on innovation and how companies and individuals can foster creativity.

      Recommended for creative professionals and those in innovative fields.
    • 4/5
      This book does an excellent job of exploring some of the concepts of how creativity and innovation get their start. Now the concept of "where do you get your ideas" is ludicrous. However, this book lays out some of the things that seem to need to be in place to increase the odds of successful creative innovation.In particular, it tends to debunk the concept of the serendipitous moment of the lone genius. Using many examples, it lays out a path that shows individual moments seldom exist without a history of concepts and idea coming together. (Yes, there is serendipity, but not without a lot of background research.) It also shows how no person really works on their own, as well as the role of large numbers in helping dissimilar ideas come together.If I have any complaint, it is that (as happens far too often when an author has a point to make) the examples seem to be chosen to prove the point. Maybe it is simply that all examples would prove the point, but these feel slightly contrived.Nonetheless, there are a lot of fresh ideas contained within this book. And I found it to be a great jump start for creative issues I was dealing with. In other words, it was a great idea generator.
    • 4/5
      This book is really more like a 3.5 star book, but I can't do that on here and I do really like Steven Johnson's writing in general (been in a fan back into the early FEED days). I also should admit that part of the reason for that half-star demotion might be that I listened to this as an audiobook. The issue was not the narrator or anything you would typically expect, but rather a simple matter of making it difficult (I was listening to it driving to and from work) to stop and ponder or jot down notes.

      Those caveats aside, I really did enjoy this book quite a bit. Jonhson has a way of clarifying ideas and concepts that I find to be helpful and stimulating. In this case, the subject matter, how new inventions, discoveries, etc. are made, is near and dear to my heart. Though I don't consider myself to be a revolutionary thinker who is regularly coming up with some flash of insight, I do take the idea of consistently trying to set myself up for new ideas, very seriously. Johnson brings together a lot of pieces of information on this subject that I had heard, in one form or another, before, but puts it into a very digestible format. I'm particularly grateful that I also own a physical copy of this book -- I'm looking forward to reading through his notes and reviewing the structure and organization of the material. I suspect that process alone will add to what I have gained from this book.
    • 4/5
      A surprisingly interesting broad survey of innovation. Somewhat formulaic in sections, and lacking any great insight, this book nevertheless presents a mass of interesting data and makes a case (fairly weak, but still a case) for re-evaluating how organisations approach innovation. That said, there is little information of practical relevance.
    • 3/5
      Johnson posits that the key to progressive innovation is fostering environments where ideas can intermingle. That having lots of ideas bumping up against one another is when meaningful connections are made. He gives some anecdotal evidence of this which are all very interesting and quite readable. I particularly liked the description of innovation as the ‘slow hunch’ rather than the eureka moment – the idea being that you make a particular connection, it comes up from time to time, and eventually all the pieces slide into place. Overall it was an easy read with some interesting information but nothing that bowled me over. Note: I received this through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
    • 1/5
      this are not for free ...but it have good value
    • 4/5
      Really good read on the best way for humanity to generate new ideas.
    • 5/5
      Good book. I hope sribd team makes a snapshot of this book.
    • 3/5
      Great concepts and efforts to elaborate on them. Could haven been a blog post.
    • 5/5
      One of this fine writer's (and thinker's) best.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Johnson posits that the key to progressive innovation is fostering environments where ideas can intermingle. That having lots of ideas bumping up against one another is when meaningful connections are made. He gives some anecdotal evidence of this which are all very interesting and quite readable. I particularly liked the description of innovation as the ‘slow hunch’ rather than the eureka moment – the idea being that you make a particular connection, it comes up from time to time, and eventually all the pieces slide into place. Overall it was an easy read with some interesting information but nothing that bowled me over. Note: I received this through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
    • 3/5
      An interesting, provocative exploration of the environments that spark creativity and innovation. Johnson's insights and observations are frequently fascinating but the ideas could be better organized and the narrative more focused.
    • 3/5
      1. The adjactent possible2. Liquid networks3. The slow hunch4 Serendipity5 Error6 Exaptation7 Platforms
    • 4/5
      Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson is an easy-to-read primer on innovation and the basis behind that innovation. The conversational style of the text and the anecdote-filled chapters help to lead the reader through the book. The consistent references to previous sections and stories help to reinforce the point of the author. While I appreciate anecdotes, the author's significant usage of ththeir certain cases will not help the book as it ages. In particular, the Apps for Democracy program in DC government which was not renewed after its initial champion moved to the Federal government. The book really shines by the synopsis of studies done which build strength to the seven points of Innovation. The best part, which comes at the end, is the case study on how innovation was done as a individual/network or as market/non-market and the progression of innovation toward network/non-market. I would have appreciated more on this. Overall, the book is a great read. The author does a great job in story telling and discussing his points on innovation and how to continue being innovative.
    • 5/5
      Reading: I enjoyed his 1997 book "Interface Culture" and I'm already enjoying this one, too. Lots of food for thought about how ideas come together. Finished: It's been a few days since I finished the book, and I still have a lot to digest from it. I highly recommend this for anyone who might be trying to tap into their own creativity, but especially if you're wanting to feel more creative at work. I did skim over a lot of the more technical scientific examples of innovation, and have a lot of questions about the big list at the end, but the chapters about innovative environments gave me plenty to investigate, especially as my library begins a project that could lead to major renovation. Basically, he's saying that the more ideas you are exposed to, the better your ideas will be. That ideas need time to incubate, so write them all down (he has a beautiful section on the commonplace book) and revisit them later. That diverse networks and diverse hobbies make for some truly amazing discoveries (such as Gutenberg basing his famous invention on a wine press -- I love that. Books from wine!). One of the first things this book has me reconsidering is my news feeds. When I look at my Twitter and RSS feeds, I see way too much about libraries and technology. I need to mix this up, bring in sources from other areas. So if you have some non-library, non-techie suggestions, let me know!
    • 5/5
      Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" is a rich addition to the literature on creativity, innovation, and collaboration, and a tremendous resource for anyone needing a reminder that little is created in a vacuum. While much of the book is rooted in examples of scientific exploration, discovery, and innovation, its scope encompasses everything from Darwin's work with coral reefs to literary historian Franco Moretti's writings on the evolution of the novel. He draws on the work of Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida in describing the levels of creativity stimulated by the density of populations in cities; Ray Oldenburg's work on the importance of coffee houses and the other "great good places" in our creative and social lives; and the efforts of many who have documented the benefits of collaborative work--but he is far from derivative. When he ultimately leads us to an understanding of and appreciation for how creativity and innovation build upon what came before us, he doesn't need to explicitly point out to us that his book, in drawing upon the work of many before him, leads him to his own thought-provoking world view. We know and understand this implicitly because he has, through his work, provided a perfect example of what he is proposing.
    • 5/5
      I had high expectations for this book and it mostly met those expectations. The only downside is I have been reading not only the books, but the blog, and most anything Steven Johnson puts out there, so there was really not a whole lot new. But having the book to point to is really helpful.
    • 4/5
      Good read with some fascinating stories about innovation
    • 4/5
      I'm pleased I won a copy of this book by one of my favorite science writers through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. In engaging prose Johnson explores through historical examples and case studies how people come up with great ideas. It's not the lone genius with a light bulb popping up over their head.Johnson discusses that innovation is possible within the adjacent possible when a number of factors come together to allow a new idea to work (on the shoulders of giants to speak). Strong networks - whether they be cities, the Web, or universities - inevitably contribute to greater innovation the solitary inventor. Ideas also come over time, the slow hunch, where something in the back of one's mind only becomes a possibility after years of interactions and research. Error and serendipity play their part as well. Johnson also discusses the idea of expatation where something built for one purpose is borrowed for an entirely different function. Platforms are also important for the development of further innovations.In an interesting conclusion, Johnson makes the case against the accepted belief of free-market competition being the greatest source of innovation (although state-controlled command economies are not the solution either). Instead Johnson calls for continued support of research universities where networks are formed and ideas shared. I enjoyed this book and I think it helped me look at innovation in new ways.Recommended books: Connections by James Burke, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven H. Strogatz, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die byChip Heath.
    • 4/5
      Steven Johnson's strength is collecting small bits of disparate information from many places and then synthesizing that information into an interesting readable form. He's made a writing career out of this methodology. As usual, he informs, entertains, and highlights some obscure knowledge. I don't think he comes up with an original definitive theory of innovation in this book but he does a good job of of exploring the foundations of innovation and some of the ways it is and has been practiced in the real world.
    • 4/5
      How do we cultivate innovation? Are there some ways to interact, to live, and to work that promote innovation? If so what are the fundamental drivers of innovation? In his latest book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (WGICF), Steven Johnson proposes a framework for answering these question. WGICF is divided into seven sections with each section addressing what Mr. Johnson considers to be a fundamental factor that facilitates innovation. Unfortunately, the core of his argument is one of analogy with nature or anecdote. From nature, he looks at structures with disproportionate diversity in nature and asks how these devices and behavior can be mapped to human culture and interaction. Although this kind of analogical writing is rhetorically compelling it doesn't provide any kind of true support for the accuracy of his statements. As for the use of anecdotes, they are useful for creating narrative from data and I am well aware they are nearly a requirement for publishing in this genre of non-fiction writing. I can even recognize they are rhetorically useful for creating emotional pull but no many how many stories you tell they simply do not provide evidence to support a thesis. Now that I've made my caveats, I do think there are lots of good ideas in the book. The factors that Johnson proposes all seem believable and fit in with what I know of cognition. In particular, three topics he includes, at least based on other readings, deeply related to being a strong thinker - making errors and subsequently thinking about the error, building connections between concepts, and actively recalling knowledge. In other places these three features have been strongly tied to becoming an expert as well as to developing an agile mind. It therefore is a reasonable leap to conclude that developing an agile mind expert in some areas can indeed increase your ability to be innovative in some sphere of knowledge. Despite the lack of evidence, WGICF was an enjoyable read. The style is pleasant, some of the stories are interesting, and all his concepts seem reasonably related to innovation and regardless of how fundamentally tied his ideas are to innovation it certainly won't hurt your innovative muscles to think about the role each o the dimensions listed in this book may play in helping you come up with your next big idea.
    • 4/5
      This is the third of Johnson's books I've read, and despite the wide variations in his subjects, I've enjoyed all of them. Johnson's main point in this work is that innovation rarely occurs because of one person trying to make money, rather, the bulk of innovation comes from one person, or multiple people, working for "non-market" reasons. He takes awhile to get to this argument, but it's oh so much fun watching him get there. Goes well in conjunction with the work of Lawrence Lessig.
    • 4/5
      This is something that I have been thinking about. It is an interesting concept and certainly something that everyone should be interested. One good idea can change everything.
    • 4/5
      "...as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."Johnson opens this wonderful book on ideas, innovation and the myth of genius with this arresting passage from Shakespeare and hardly slows from there. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Remarkable book.A change of pace from books that guide you to developing creativity skills, this book describes the matrix that will increase the potential for innovation/creativity. And it is not always what you would think.Drawing from a dizzying number of fields as diverse as Darwin's theories to the investigations of 9-11, Steve Johnson painstakingly distills from past innovations the primordial soup that brought them about. He contends that this soup/matrix consists of seven broad elements :1. the adjacent possible (that innovations cause or make possible further innovations)2. liquid networks (WE are smarter than just ME)3. the slow hunch (ideas need development time)4. serendipity (the time has to be right)5. error (my favorite. Sometimes nothing works as well as a good mistake)6. exaptation (borrowing ideas from different fields of knowledge)7. platforms (using things/ideas in new ways and building on what has come before)Each of these ideas receives its own chapter in the book and is explored in detail.In conclusion, Johnson attempts to categorize previous inventions according to market motivation (monetary recompense) and whether the invention was developed/discovered by an individual or a group/network. The author lost me somewhat on this discussion but that was probably more due to the fact that I was reading this book more from a social science/education standpoint than from a marketing one.This book is a tour de force and it could/should have far reaching implications. While the focus seemed more on scientific and workplace innovation, it made me wonder what an education system would look like if these ideas were implemented. Also, what kind of impact would using these ideas have for seniors - could it possibly help with age related mental decline? And I personally would be very interested in seeing an interface between the book's ideas and positive psychology (the science of optimal mental health as opposed to mental illness). This is a book I could recommend to anyone - it is very well written, extraordinarily interesting, and would be relevant to any life area or endeavor . Only one requirement necessary - a healthy curiosity (but you already have that, otherwise why would you be reading this). This book is a treat. Now if you will excuse me, it is time for a walk.
    • 4/5
      It’s fun to watch Johnson’s brain work; that is at least half the pleasure in reading his books. Whether he’s writing about slime mold or television he asks great questions, doesn’t stop looking when he has an obvious answer, and makes unexpected connections. He can also write, and comes up with memorable phrases and descriptions (In a discussion of hydrogen bonds, water “is a fiendishly talented dissolver of things.”)In his sixth book, Johnson’s big idea is ideas, and where they come from. He’s interested in innovation — useful new ideas — and what sort of environments encourage innovation. His argument boils down to that there are certain properties found “in unusually fertile environments” and he has identified seven patterns important to successful innovation spaces. He was able to identify these patterns by shifting his perspective and developing a framework he calls the “long zoom”. His insight was that in looking at innovation from multiple scales, patterns that would otherwise be obscured become visible, and that this approach doesn’t just yield new metaphors to help our understanding, but gives that it “gives us new facts”:"But when you look at innovation from the long-zoom perspective, competition turns out to be less central to the history of good ideas than we generally think. Analyzing innovation on the scale of indivuals and organizations — ad the standard textbooks do — distorts our view. It creates a picture of innovation that overstates the role of proprietary research and “survival of the fittest” competition. The long-zoom approach lets us see that openness and connectivity may, in the end, be more valuable to innovation than purely competitive mechanisms."Using examples from Gutenberg to Darwin to the inventor of air conditioning and the web, Johnson explains and explores the importance of these patterns and how they allow ideas (which are, literally speaking, networks) to flourish.The adjacent possibleCoined by theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, this phrase describes the first-order combinations you can come up with based on what you have. The ingredients for certain molecular reactions were in primordial soup, but you couldn’t go right to blue whale from those ingredients. The thing is, the adjacent possible expands as you explore. The adjacent possible is how you can create an incubator for the third world that runs on spare car parts — you take the materials available (car parts and mechanic’s skillset) and combine them in new ways to create a medical device that saves lives.Liquid NetworksIdeas are networks: in your brain, a new idea is a set of neurons firing in your brain in sync for the first time. In other words ideas aren’t isolated things, as Johnson points out, they are more like a swarm. There’s movement, the possibility of making new connections — a nearly literal liquid network, in the case of your brain. The primordial soup from which life on earth emerged was a liquid network; so is MIT’s building 99 with its reconfigurable walls designed for information spillover.The slow hunchWe tend to think of a flash of insight leading to new discoveries, but often innovations emerge when an idea that has been kicked around for years is combined with other ideas. Hunches need space and time to evolve; if Tim Berners-Lee didn’t work for an employer that made it possible to tinker with ideas and nurse hunches, we might not have the web.SerendipityIdeas need to be able to bump into each other; this is how we make new connections that spark. I love that Johnson refutes the wrong-headed notion that the web is killing serendipity — he says that “the irony of the serendipity debate” is that “the thing that is being mourned has actually gone from a fringe experience to the mainstream of culture”. Few browsed library stacks to see what was next to the book they were looking for, but nearly everyone Googles: exposure to new, not intentionally sought information is near-constant on the web.ErrorJohnson uses the example of De Forest being wrong about why his experiment was doing what it was doing, but his work still leading to the development of vacuum tubes and computers, but I like this summation on error best: “Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore.”ExaptationThis refers to the process of taking something that emerges for one use, and repurposing it for another. It is thought that feathers originally evolved to keep a dinosaur warmer, but were exapted for flight. Gutenberg borrowing the technology of the wine press to create the printing press is another example of exaptation. As Johnson more humorously put it, Gutenberg “took a machine designed to get people drunk and turned into into an engine for mass communication.”PlatformsCoral reefs are platforms; so is the web. Platforms building is about emergent behavior: beavers don’t set out to create an ecosystem to support kingfishers and dragonflies when they build their dams, but they do. We have consumer GPS systems today because two engineers figured out how to track Sputnik and were asked if they could reverse it (and find an unknown location on earth from a known point in space) for a DOD project. Open platforms, because they allow for more ideas to collide and combine, are more generative.Throughout his exploration and explication of these patterns, Johnson notes that openness seems to work best. While he acknowledges that the market has been an engine of innovation, it is not the only one, and not necessarily the best one. He believes, and convincingly demonstrates, “that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are protecting them.”"Good ideas my not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete."Armed with awareness of these seven patterns, we can at work or at play, increase the odds we’ll be able to cultivate good ideas. Johnson ends his book with a call to go out and do just that:"Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent. Build a tangled bank."[This review based on the advanced uncorrected proof copy I received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.]
    • 5/5
      Steven Johnson explores interesting territory with this book, in which he draws parallels to biological evolution to help explain the emergence of innovative ideas. Considering innovation through this lens helps to explain suppositions and suggest tactics for leaders to use in seeking innovation from teams.Johnson's work suggests that technological innovation can be considered as another manifestation of the "force of life". And in this way, appears to be an interesting complement to a book coming from Kevin Kelly ("What Technology Wants")Additionally, he makes a compelling point that intellectual property rights are _not_ a requirement to enable innovation. However, in doing so, he doesn't take the position that they are required. With this approach to intellectual property rights, he strikes an interesting middle ground between ideological camps.He also does not strike either an "pro-technology" or a "doomsday" tone, which is refreshing to see in an otherwise frequently polarized topic.As a writer, Johnson is the type of non-fiction author who can take a topic one might consider dry and make it compelling. Other books about innovation tend to be slow reads. That is not the case with this one... I found myself with enough momentum to read the end notes. And to me, that was the clincher on deciding how to rate this book.(Reviewed a free copy received via LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.)
    • 5/5
      Johnson is a great synthetic thinker and writer. He draws on a deep set of resources and obscure reference material to support his position. His style of writing is fluid and like his other books makes for compelling and enjoyable reading.