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Zusammenfassung von Where Good Ideas Come From

Name: Where Good Ideas Come From
Rating: 4.2 (162 reviews)
Author: Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson

The Natural History of Innovation

4.2 (162 Bewertungen)

18 Min.

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Innovation Naturwissenschaft

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Evolution and innovation usually happen in the realm of the adjacent possible.

Four billion years ago, carbon atoms mulled around in the primordial soup. But as life began, those atoms did not spontaneously arrange themselves into complex life forms like sunflowers or squirrels.

First, they had to form simpler structures like molecules, polymers, proteins, cells, primitive organisms and so forth. Each step along the way opened up possibilities for new combinations, expanding the realm of what was possible, until finally a carbon atom could reside in a sunflower.

Similarly, eBay could not be created in the 1950s. First, someone had to invent computers, then a way to connect those computers, then a World Wide Web for people to browse, and then a platform that supported online payments.

Both evolution and innovation tend to happen within the bounds of the adjacent possible; in other words, the realm of possibilities available at any given moment.

Great leaps beyond the adjacent possible are rare, and doomed to be short-term failures if the environment is simply not yet ready for them. Had YouTube been launched in the 1990s, it would have flopped since neither the fast Internet connections nor the software required to view videos was available then.

The predominance of multiples in innovation highlights how the adjacent possible is constrained by existing parts and knowledge. A multiple occurs when several people independently make the same discovery almost simultaneously.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen in 1772 and 1774 respectively, unaware of the other’s advancement. But they did share the same starting point, because their search for oxygen could not begin until the gaseous nature of air was first understood. Thus it was inevitable that some scientists would reach their discoveries at around the same time.

World-changing ideas generally evolve over time as slow hunches rather than as sudden breakthroughs.

Although in retrospect great discoveries may seem like single, definable eureka-moments, in reality they tend to fade into view slowly. They are like gradually maturing slow hunches, which demand time and cultivation to bloom.

According to Darwin, the theory of natural selection simply popped into his head when he was contemplating Malthus’ writings on population growth. But Darwin’s notebooks reveal that, far before this so-called epiphany, he had already described a very nearly complete theory of natural selection. This slow hunch only matured into a fully-formed theory over time.

Platforms are like springboards for innovations.

Ecologists use the term keystone species to describe organisms which are disproportionately important to the welfare of the ecosystem. On a small island with no other predators, a pack of wolves keep the population of sheep under control, thus stopping them from eating the island’s vegetation bare and collapsing the entire ecosystem.

Around two decades ago, ecologists understood that a very specific and important type of keystone species warranted its own term entirely. Ecosystem engineers actually create habitats for other organisms, building platforms from which several others benefit. Consider, for example, the beavers that dam rivers, turning forests into wetlands, or the coral that builds thriving reefs in the middle of the ocean.

Innovation and evolution thrive in large networks.

The basis of all life on Earth (and likely any extraterrestrial life out there) is carbon, because it is fundamentally good at connecting with other atoms and can thus construct complex chains of molecules. These connections allow new structures like proteins to emerge. Without carbon, the Earth would have likely remained a dead soup of chemicals.

Connections also facilitate ideas. When humans first began to organize themselves into settlements, towns and cities, they became members of networks, which exposed them to new ideas and allowed them to spread their own discoveries. Before these connections, a novel idea by one person could well die with her since she had no network to spread it to. Great ideas rise in crowds.

Collaboration is at least as important a driver of innovation as competition.

The ability of inventors and entrepreneurs to capitalize on their discoveries is often cited as a fundamental driver of innovation. But while the commercialization potential of inventions indeed spurs innovation, it also generates patents and other restrictions, thus hindering the circulation and further development of ideas.

Thus with regard to innovation, the very markets which are supposed to guarantee efficiency by rewarding inventors are in fact structurally inefficient, because they artificially prevent ideas from propagating and combining with others.

Lucky connections between ideas drive innovation.

The ability of carbon to connect with other atoms was vital for the evolution of life, but a second, randomizing, force was also necessary: water.

Water moves and churns, dissolving and eroding everything in its path, thus fostering new kinds of connections between atoms in the primordial soup. Just as importantly, the strong hydrogen bonds of water molecules helped maintain those connections.

Serendipitous discoveries can be facilitated by a shared intellectual or physical space.

When ideas converge in a shared physical or intellectual space, through for example people from different disciplines meeting, creative collisions happen. Consider the modernist cultural innovations of the 1920s. Many of them were largely a result of artists, poets and writers meeting at the same Parisian cafés. Shared interactions allow ideas to diffuse, circulate and be combined randomly with others.

On an individual level, facilitating such serendipitous connections is simply a matter of simultaneously introducing ideas from different disciplines into your consciousness. Innovators like Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin both favored working on multiple projects simultaneously, in a kind of slow multitasking mode. One project would take center stage for days at a time but linger at the back of the mind afterwards too, so connections between projects could be drawn.

Great innovations emerge from environments that are partly contaminated by error.

Error is present in both the evolution of life and the innovation of great ideas, and it is not always a bad thing.

Consider natural reproduction: genes are passed on from parent to offspring, providing “building instructions” for how the offspring should develop. Without occasional mutations, meaning random errors in those instructions, evolution would have long ago come to a virtual standstill. The elephant’s tusks or peacock’s feathers would have never emerged if only perfect copies of existing genes had propagated. Mutations endow creatures with new traits. While most of them fail fantastically, these errors also produce a few winners, thus driving evolution.

Innovation thrives on reinventing and reusing the old.

Evolutionary biologists use the term exaptation to describe the phenomenon where a trait originally developed for a specific purpose is eventually used in a completely different way. Feathers, for example, originally evolved as a method for temperature regulation, but today their airfoil-shape helps birds fly.

Often, ideas are similarly repurposed along the way. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a tool for scholars but in the course of time it became a network for shopping, social networking and pornography, among other things. Johannes Gutenberg, on the other hand, found an innovative use for a 1000-year-old invention: he combined the ancient technology of the wine screw press – used to squeeze juice out of grapes – with his knowledge of metallurgy and created the world’s first printing press.

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Worum geht es in Where Good Ideas Come From?

Where Good Ideas Come From (2011) examines the evolution of life on Earth and the history of science. This New York Times bestseller highlights many parallels between the two, ranging from carbon atoms forming the very first building blocks of life to cities and the World Wide Web fostering great innovations and discoveries.

In addition to presenting this extensive analysis, replete with anecdotes and scientific evidence, Johnson also considers how individual and organizational creativity can be cultivated.

Wer Where Good Ideas Come From lesen sollte

Anyone interested in the history of science and innovation, especially tantalizing anecdotes of great discoveries.
Anyone who wishes to be more creative and innovative, or hopes to foster such traits on an organizational level.
Anyone interested in the evolution of life on Earth.

Über den Autor

Steven Johnson is an American popular science author. He regularly contributes to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Financial Times, and his previous bestsellers include Everything Bad is Good for You and The Ghost Map.

The idea behind Where Good Ideas Come From was to examine and explain what kinds of environments have historically fostered innovation.

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