November 30, 2010 Vol. 3, Issue 11
By understanding the patterns of good ideas, we’ll be better at tapping into our capacity for innovative thinking, according to Steven Johnson.
The printing press, natural selection, and the Apollo 13 carbon dioxide filter (the “mailbox”) were all good ideas. InWhere Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson explores the conditions under which good ideas develop. He identifies a number of recurring patterns or conditions that are present when they come about ranging from liquidity of networks, to serendipity, to being wrong.
Johnson’s book revolves around the concept of the “adjacent possible.” The term refers to a sort of “shadow future” found along the edges of the present state. For instance, when the first molecules of oxygen and methane emerged in the primordial soup of the earth, the adjacent possible was to create other molecules like water and formaldehyde. These collisions could not create life—yet. Several other realities needed to be achieved. “What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change,” Johnson writes, “but only certain changes can happen.”
Beyond the adjacent possible, Johnson identifies other patterns that bring about good ideas. Liquid networks, which strike a balance between chaos and order, are one sort of pattern often seen, writes Johnson. Good ideas come from error, misunderstanding, and a quick succession of failures. Sometimes they arise from slow hunches, like natural selection for Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. In other cases, good ideas result from applying something to a different use, called exaptation. For instance, in one context (the dark) matches are used to increase visibility, but in another (cold, wood, fuel) they are used for warmth.
Perhaps one of the most prevalent good idea generators of today is the concept of open platforms. These platforms range from the dams built by beavers, which lead to the development of entire ecosystems, to Tim Berners-Lee creating a World Wide Web open and accessible to everyone, ready for users to build upon. He even describes the Applied Physics Laboratory as a type of open platform that enabled William Guier and George Weiffenbach to create the beginnings of the modern Global Positioning System (GPS). They were given the freedom to follow their hunch about tracking the Russian Sputnik spacecraft from the ground and then later reverse the process.
Idea generation increasingly happens in a non-market setting among collaborative, networked people, writes Johnson. The next challenge organizations will face, he says, is creating the types of environments that foster this kind of innovation. “It is in the nature of good ideas to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before them, which means that by some measure, every important innovation is fundamentally a network affair.”
