Where Good Ideas Come From

On Friday, I got the galley copies of my new book, to be published in early October. It’s called Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation. I’ve been working on this one for almost five years now, though in some ways the idea for it is almost a decade old. The subject of the book is right there in the title: it’s a book that tries to grapple with the question of why certain environments seem to be disproportionately skilled at generating and sharing good ideas. It’s a book, in other words, about the space of creativity. Part of the fun of it—though also the challenge of writing it—is that I look at both cultural and natural systems in the book. So I look at human environments that have been unusually generative: the architecture of successful science labs, the information networks of the Web or the Enlightenment-era postal system, the public spaces of metropolitan cities, even the notebooks of great thinkers. But I also look at natural environments that have been biologically innovative: the coral reef and the rain forest, or the chemical soups that first gave birth to life’s good idea. 

The book is built around dozens of stories from the history of scientific, technological and cultural innovation: how Darwin’s "eureka moment" about natural selection turned out to be a myth; how Brian Eno invented a new musical convention by listening to too much AM radio; how Gutenberg borrowed a crucial idea from the wine industry to invent modern printing; why GPS was accidentally developed by a pair of twenty-somethings messing around with a microwave receiver; how a design team has created a infant incubator made entirely out of spare automobile parts. But I have also tried to distill some meaningful—and hopefully useful—lessons out of all these stories, and so I’ve isolated seven distinct patterns that appear again and again in all these innovative environments. (Each pattern gets its own chapter.)

I first started working on this idea in the background as I was writing The Ghost Map, my book about John Snow’s brilliant solution to the mystery of cholera. (One of the lessons of Where Good Ideas Come From is the importance of having “background” projects.) In researching it, I stumbled across the story of Joseph Priestley and the discovery of plant respiration, and got so inspired that I decided to write The Invention of Air first. At the time, it occurred to me that this new book would effectively turn out to be the theory lurking behind the narratives of Ghost Map and Invention; both those books were portraits of world-changing ideas and the environments that cultivated them. So I have come to think of the three books as a kind of informal trilogy: two tight-focus case studies leading up to a wider vista. (Snow and Priestley each make small appearances in Where Good Ideas Come From.) The new book differs from the last two in that it is prescriptive; it’s my version of a how-to book, supported with stories of great ideas from the past (along with a few stories of ideas that failed for interesting reasons.) If it  works, you should walk away from it as a reader not just with some interesting anecdotes about the amazing biodiversity of a coral reef, or the invention of the vacuum tube, but with something hopefully a bit more practical: ideas for making your own spaces—where you work, where you think, where you pursue your hobbies, where you read—more innovative as well.

There’s much more to say, including information on the tour we’re planning for October. (And early November in the UK.) But in the meantime, if the book sounds interesting, you can pre-order it already on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com. (Pre-orders, by the way, are a great way to help authors whose work you want to support—it helps not only by generating a sale but also by showing advance interest in a book.) We’ll be talking about Where Good Ideas Come From here on the blog and on Twitter through the summer, but I look forward to seeing many of you in person when I hit the road for the book tour in October.  

Comments

[Joe Holmes]

Your blog was recommended to me by a friend, and reading this entry first, I thought your new book sounded intriguing. I put it in my mental Browse In Bookstore and Consider Buying list. Then I reached the part where you mention your previous book, Ghost Map, which I read last year, and your new book immediately bumped up to Must Buy Soon. Ghost Map was superb.

[Augusto Pinaud]

Dear Steve, I hope you release a Kindle version. Until then I will not pre-order.

[KB]

Would love to have you come speak in London in November if you have any dates free. We have a gathering of people in a wonderful old venue in Clerkenwell thinking about the connections between technology and philosophy, and this would be a perfect fit if you'd be up for it. Decent honorarium and good profile of the book to a great demographic... Would love to have you!

[Norm DeValliere]

Sounds intriguing, I look forward to reading it.

[Ted Braun]

I anxiously await this book. I am in the middle of thinking about where change happens in the real estate business. I am sure that, as you have with your other books, you will sharpen my thinking.

http://qedrealestate.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/ikea-for-real-estate/

[Giuseppe Lucido]

Hi Steve,
great to hear we'll have to wait only a few more months. I just can't wait to read it.
Any chance your tour will hit Italy as well? If not, think about planning Milan. We'll be very happy to host you again for a special edition of Meet the Media Guru.
Cheers,
Giuseppe

[David Lipscomb]

Can't wait for this one, Steven. I happen to know this idea's been percolating for something like 15 years. BTW, if you haven't seen it yet, you must check out the maps created by Eric Fischer on Flickr: he used Flickr geotagging data to create heatmaps of where locals vs. tourists took photos in top cities. I immediately thought of you when I saw them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/detail/

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[glory]

speaking of which, you might find cosma shalizi's broadside against (naive) bayesian-ism interesting... from whence bad ideas come (and how they might be corrected ;)

http://bactra.org/weblog/664.html

cheers!

[jack]

BTW, if you haven't seen it yet, you must check out the maps created by Eric Fischer on Flickr: http://www.wxshenzhou.com/ wind generatorshe used Flickr geotagging data to create heatmaps of where locals vs. tourists took photos in top cities. I immediately thought of you when I saw them.

[Jim Takchess]

This is a timely and interesting topic which I look forward to reading about. I was thinking this was the possible subject of Gladwell's next book.

A great book that looks at causes of invention/innovation during the industrial revolution is found here.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7863046-the-most-powerful-idea-in-the-world

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What a pity I miss seeing all those gorgeous knits! Thanks for sharing the photos.

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[Daniel L. Burnstein]

Love your TED talk about on the origin of great ideas. I do have a question though. If you have some great ideas to start with, what do you do with them if, like me, you're outside the academia and there exist no networks that welcome ideas that are not only innovative but also challenge established concepts?

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I caught your video which led me to search for your book and find this blog, I'm looking forward to reading it here in Canada.

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Dear Steve, I hope you release a Kindle version. Until then I will not pre-order.

[twitter.com/762x51]

Read your WSJ article last week. Interesting stuff, but I have bad news. I now intend to steal this book, rather than pay for it. After all, it could be a "part on the table" pertinent to my understanding of some undisclosed subject matter. Unless I misread the article, it seems you're not terribly fond of property rights. Any distinction asserting the importance of copyright - which, bear in mind, has an immeasurably lower per-development investment level on the aggregate - would seem tremendously disingenuous.

Further, I suppose your argument might hold water in an exclusively trade-secret regime, but the limited monopoly allowed by patent is intended to encourage not only investment but _disclosure_, thus getting new technologies published, for the public, sooner than if an inventor was provided no rights in his development. The cobbling and adjacent moves do occur, just fine, as it is.

Finally, don't read too much into the "open" behavior of a few big actors. The release of certain IP into the public domain is part public relations, part financial strategy (maintenance fees are expensive). What would be far more elucidating would be to see what percentage of filings they have/are actually releasing, as well as an overview of their recent offensive and defensive litigation behavior. Judging by the number of IP attorneys P&G keeps around, I have a sneaking suspicion they're not leading the charge to eradicate rights to exclude or remedies against infringers. But it does make for great media.

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[Boris Shakhnovich]

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