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Nov
10
In which I fail to muster enthusiasm for WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Published October 2010 by Riverhead
Epiphanies and light-bulb ideas and aha! moments make for dramatic storytelling, but Steven Johnson contends that that’s not how real innovation happens. Drawing examples from biology and the evolution of the natural world and from technology and the evolution of cities and the modern world, Johnson presents a fascinating argument about the importance of “the space of innovation” and contends that “if we want to understand where good ideas come from, we have to put them in context.”
Makes sense, right?
In Where Good Ideas Come From, Johnson studies major scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs and identifies seven environmental features that are common to almost all of them, contending that in order to fully understand how an idea is born, we have to know not just about the thinker’s personal history but about the physical space in which the thinker developed the idea. Beginning with what he terms “the adjacent possible,” Johnson notes that good ideas are “constrained by the parts and skills that surround them,” and that innovation does not occur in a vacuum.
We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them into some new shape.
The adjacent possible is “a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself,” and while it offers the opportunity for astounding change, it is, by nature, limited. Johnson describes evolution as “a continual exploration of the adjacent possible” and explains that the number of potential next steps is higher when the environment exposes us to a wider variety of “spare parts.” The image of a scientist making a major discovery in the solitude of his basement lab is wistfully appealing, but it is the exception, not the rule.
The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.
And to do that, we need to be part of liquid networks, the second of Johnson’s seven environmental factors. The larger and more plastic (capable of change) a network is, the more likely it is to foster innovation. Liquid, high-density networks allow ideas (and the people who have them) to flow and bump into each other randomly, and that makes us smarter. Johnson hastens to add, though, that this isn’t an argument for the so-called hive mind.
It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network.
As anyone who’s ever sat in a lab meeting or participated in a brainstorming session knows, the collective intelligence of a group does change the way its members think and often provides a way in to exploring ideas and solving problems that the individuals approached but couldn’t quite put their fingers on by themselves, and, happily, we in the modern world can count the internet and our large social networks as virtual lab meetings. They are nothing if not the kind of liquid, high-density networks Johnson sees in cities, the coffee houses of the eighteenth century, and, as he noted in a talk at the SIBA convention in September, independent bookstores. Johnson agrees that these are wonderful tools, but he stands by the statement that “the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.”
Johnson goes on to argue that, contrary to popular lore, good ideas do not occur as singular epiphanies but begin life in the form of the slow hunch—incomplete notions that need to be cultivated and exposed to an environment in which it they bump into other half-formed ideas and join together to form a complete idea. And sure, serendipity is often part of the equation, as good ideas have been known to come from dreams and accidental run-ins between innovators working in very different disciplines.
Error also bears mentioning, particularly when it occurs within environments where we can explore the adjacent possible, engage our liquid networks and connect with other ideas to become productive. Johnson points to the fact that errors and mutations in the genetic code are often the starting points for evolution and states that good ideas are more likely to come not from perfectly clean environments but from environments that have a certain amount of noise and error. In other words, sometimes it pays to be wrong.
And it pays to step outside our fields and explore other areas. According to Johnson, the Gutenberg press was born when its namesake visited a winery and saw the plates used to press the juice out of grapes, which is an example of exaptation or “combinatorial innovation” in which members of one field borrow mature technology from a different field and use it to solve an unrelated problem. The possibility of exaptation is an example of why cross-disciplinary dialogue and, again, liquid, high-density networks that expose us to a wide variety of people and ideas, are important.
Platforms or “intellectual habitats” are the final piece of the puzzle, and open, transparent platforms that encourage sharing and innovating problem solving are ideal for the creation of good ideas. (In a fun example, Johnson cites genres as the platforms and paradigms of the creative world, and book people are sure to enjoy that discussion and think of their own examples of genre-related game changers.)
And this all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Johnson’s argument is elegant and appealing and pleasantly mindbending….at least, it is in the beginning. But he falls prey to what I think of as “Malcolm Gladwell Syndrome” and that is why, though the book’s concept is great, its execution failed to get me excited. Johnson over-explains and over-illustrates to the point that it’s like ENOUGH ALREADY! LET’S STOP BEATING THAT DEAD HORSE.
I’m totally on board with the idea that the physical spaces in which we live our lives (and, given my love of teh interweb, the virtual spaces as well) affect how and what we think, and I can personally attest to the ways in which the liquid, high-density network that is Twitter has led to some of my best ideas, but I’m not sold on the idea that this is the kind of concept that requires 326 pages of exploration. Johnson shows his whole hand in the first few chapters, and though his choice to draw connections between biological evolution and technological evolution is inspired, it is overshadowed by the eventual feeling that Johnson is talking down to readers and over-illustrating in an attempt to make sure we understand what is essentially a simple message: If you want to have good ideas, put yourself in an environment that is more likely to give rise to them. Fair enough.
This would make an excellent long magazine piece (hello, New Yorker, I’m thinking of you) but fails to establish itself as requiring the space and time of a full-length book and, well, it all feels just a little too easy. Johnson gets an A for making an elegant argument and finding some truly fascinating examples, but while it’s great in theory, the final product is less than fully realized. Where Good Ideas Come From isn’t bad; it’s just not as good as it could have been. 3.25 out of 5.
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