Where Good Ideas Come From

In my last post I was venting on being in an environment that doesn’t always inspire the best in me, a little bit afterwards, I came across a TED talk done by Steven Johnson, “Where Good Ideas Come From.”

At the beginning he Johnson speaks of British society being transformed by the invention of English coffee houses, because they were a turn from alcohol. A talk beginning with coffee houses, creativity and stimulating environments? I was hooked to see the rest. Most of what was touched upon in this talk I already suspected, such as ideas do not realistically arrive to people isolated and not without past failures, but his examples reaffirmed what I already knew and were examples of how this knowledge has been applied. With “openness” creeping in everywhere from Facebook to the democratization of knowledge on Wikipedia, the talk makes an interesting proposition to connect and share, rather than to protect and patent.

I haven’t seen a slew of TED Talks, as they do run lengthy, but I find them fascinating because they bring up new ways of thinking about things that do, or do not run parallel with convention. But of course, the ones arguing against convention are the more interesting ones. So, following the encounters that are shaping my thoughts and opinions I just wanted to share this. It runs 20 minutes long, but if you don’t have time for that, I’ve practiced my summarizing abilities by giving you a synopsis of the talk, and the original video is linked at the end as well:

Steven Johnson is interested in looking for shared patterns for creativity, and argues that conventional mindsets about ideas are not accurate. The eureka moment, lightbulbs coming on, or epiphany moments that come out of nowhere, did not come out of nowhere isolated. He argues an idea is a new network of neurons that have never been formed. The question becomes how do you get your brain to successfully create these new networks. An interesting note he slides in is that network patterns of the outside world mimic the inside world. How they mimic isn’t elaborated on though. Through stories he fleshes out his thesis that ideas are more often than not cobbled from what we have. The conversations that were had, and of past failures where stories are combined, make up a great environment for innovation, the liquid network. He also speaks of incubation periods or slow hunches before the Eureka moment that can take years before the one breakthrough loose-end tying idea comes out. Because of this nature in ideas, he proposes that instead of shrouding innovation in secrecy, they should be made open so that others may further build upon them.

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