Where Good Ideas Come From...A Conversation with Steven Johnson

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

We all know a good idea when we see one. The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery, and Google are all great ideas but where did they come from? What kinds of environments created these magical wonders? Were they flashes of brilliance? Inspiration? Or years in the making?

There’s a natural space of innovation; environments that breed good ideas effortlessly. Traced across time and disciplines, we can see seven shared properties and patterns that recur again and again in usually productive spaces. The more we embrace these patterns, in our work, in our home, in our life, the better we will be at tapping our extraordinary capacity for innovative thinking.

On Tuesday, December 14, 2010 best-selling author Steven Johnson was in the house to share highlights from his latest book Where Good Ideas Come From (watch the video). Building on his acclaimed, bestselling narratives of historical innovators, The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air, Johnson revealed how innovation can accelerate under certain circumstances and how physical environments can affect and enhance great ideas, bringing people and ideas together.


About Steven Johnson

Best-selling author of several thoughtful and surprising books linking science, technology and society. Steven is also a longtime innovator in the digital space whose latest endeavor is outside.in, a radical new form of hyper-local news that maps web conversations onto real neighborhoods.


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