Where Good Ideas Come From

Description

This work tracks the history of innovation in the form of the "slow hunch". The author discusses how new ideas form from the scaffolding of older ideas, a phenomenon he describes as the "adjacent possible". Includes delightful figures of how innovative ideas are shifting from one man with a plan for a profit to many minds working for the public good.

Description

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery?these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the groundbreaking ideas that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson?s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. What he finds gives us both an important new understanding of the roots of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.Steven Johnson's next book, Future Perfect, will be available Fall 2012 from Riverhead Books.?

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Other Editions

• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationElectronic resourcePenguin Group US2011-01-01
• Where Good Ideas Come FromPenguin Books, Limited2011-01-01
• Where Good Ideas Come FromPaperbackRiverhead Books2011-10-04
• Where good ideas come from : the natural history of innovation