All The Good Ideas Links That Are Fit To Print

One of the key things you hope for with an “idea” book like Where Good Ideas Come From --beyond the book sales, or the turnout at the signings and lectures--is that it will actually spark a conversation. While Good Ideas is less conspicuously argumentative than the last big conversation-starter I wrote, Everything Bad Is Good For You, it does make a sustained argument about how societies innovate, and I’d hoped that reviewers and bloggers and op-ed columnists would pick up on that argument. I also hoped that the book itself would be a platform that others would build on, borrowing its ideas and applying them to new fields that I hadn’t explored in the book.

So it’s been really wonderful to see the sheer volume of responses to the book--not just the reviews, but all the features and extended blog posts and discussion threads, and even new software tools emerging over the past month. I’ve been trying to keep up with everything on Twitter, but thought I would take the time to pull some of the links together in a single blog post. If this seems a little excessive, I promise you this is only a fraction of the material out there about the book right now. (And I know there’s more to come.)

I got my start as a journalist writing about technology for the UK Guardian, and so it was particularly fun to see this feature by the very clever Oliver Burkeman run in its pages. Apparently I talked quite a bit over lunch, at least according to the opening graph: “Let's start with the invention of air conditioning. This is only one of approximately a zillion topics addressed by the science writer Steven Johnson during the course of lunch at an Italian restaurant in downtown Manhattan; some of the others include Darwinian evolution, the creation of YouTube, the curiously perfect population density of the Park Slope neighbourhood of Brooklyn, the French Revolution, the London cholera epidemic of 1854, the first computer, The Wire, and why 9/11 wasn't prevented.”

The Guardian feature ends with a discussion of the politics of open networks, which I then explored in my detail in this column from the NY Times Sunday business section: “... a few weeks ago, during the second stop on the tour for my new book, I found myself being interviewed in front of a Seattle audience and responding to an opening question that I had never been asked before: “Are you a Communist?” The question was intended as a joke, but like the best jokes, it played on the edges of an important and uncomfortable truth.” I also wrote a long feature for the Financial Times applying the book’s theories to the amazing surge of digital startup activity in my home town of New York.

In terms of reviews, here’s a small sample of recent appraisals of the book. The LA Times ran a very thoughtful and kind assessment, with some caveats: “Like all of Johnson's books, Where Good Ideas Comes From is fluidly written, entertaining and smart without being arcane. But is it any more successful than Renaissance recipes for turning lead into gold? ‘The more we embrace these patterns’ in innovative spaces, Johnson says, ‘the better we will be at tapping our extraordinary capacity for innovative thinking.’ I'm not sure it's that easy...

Less kind was Christopher Bray in The Independent, who seemed to confuse my argument with Malcolm Gladwell’s theories about genius in Outliers, despite the fact that I don’t talk about the concept of the genius at all in Good Ideas: “Blue-sky thinkers with their helicopter views will doubtless claim that Johnson's suggestions help them push the envelope, but the rest of us can see that his ‘adjacent possibles’ and ‘liquid networks’ are no more than the latest flimflam. At one point, Johnson tries to convince us that ideas grow out of ideas the way the natural world synergises. Beavers gnaw down trees in which woodpeckers drill holes in which songbirds nest – and in some way, I forget quite how, it's all a bit like Twitter.”

Jason Jones, at ProfHacker, reviews the book in the specific context of its uses in higher education: “This is also Johnson’s best-written book, and it’s an argument that this connection-making thinker was seemingly born to pursue. Full of stories of innovation from across the disciplines, but with recurring themes from biology, cities, the arts, and the web, Where Good Ideas Come From is an unmissable book for anyone who cares about creativity, innovation, networks, or higher education.” For the business market, 800CEOReads founder Jack Coverts writes in his review: “Where Good Ideas Come From is a book that requires some investment from the reader because of the complex nature of idea creation and evolution, and the fact that Johnson digs deep into it. But the great research and engaging stories make that investment small compared to the rewards. This is one of the best books of the year.”

This BBC Business feature includes a video clip airing on BBC World News this week; if you’d like to get a sense of what I sound and look like when I’m jetlagged, unshaven, and fighting a week-long cold and sore throat, this is the video for you! I thought these questions from Alan Jacobs at New Atlantis were very astute ones: “But as I read and enjoyed the book, I sometimes found myself asking questions that Johnson doesn't raise.... Can a society be overly innovative? Is it possible to produce more new idea, discoveries, and technologies than we can healthily incorporate?” In the Observer, Robert McCrum uses the book as a launching pad for an interesting discussion of literary creation.

And my favorite of all: Chris Whamond is developing a web application inspired by the book at slowhunch.com. As he puts it, “the big idea behind SlowHunch is that it connects ideas and enables them to cross-pollinate and build upon other ideas. This is a site for developing ideas, not just recording them.” Perhaps, when we’re done, each chapter of the book will have inspired a new web application or startup. Liquid Networks may be the “latest flimflam” but that doesn’t mean it won’t make a killer web site!

Comments

[fake christian louboutin]

*To share my life with you here is part of my happiness.

[coach outlet factory]

good advice is beyond all price.

[Vic Kley]

Looking at the two comments before this I'm not sure that this isn't being advertised somewhere as a Fortune Cookie Writer's Blog.

Just about finished Where Good Ideas Come From you handed me at the ICAp Ocean Tomo affair. I'm sure I'll have other comments but here are a few simple ones that (except the last) should be only helpful not debatable.

In the excellent list of important inventions you have Tesla three times. Twice you misidentify him as first an Austrian (close but no cigar) and then a Czech. He was a Croatian American (naturalized). Of course Croatia, Slovakia and Serbia were conquered Austrian territories soon to ignite WWI.

I was delighted to see that you appreciated the importance of the ball bearing and thereby hangs the tale of the nanotechnology diamond ball bearing the next "Really Great Thing". You had all the ingredients a plenty in NAPA two days ago but didn't know it.

Apple 1 was of no consequence nor was it the first PC on a single card. Having visited Jobs and the "Woz" at their South Bay storefront to try to sell them on graphic computing and the touch pad input tablet our little Berkeley company was producing in 1977 when they started seriously selling the Apple II I can tell you what set them apart from much better PC's from Processor Tech, and Altair was their concentration on the uninformed user with clear readable user guides and manuals. They were the first to try to serve the non-nerd marketplace!
In 1977 we also had coded, and built some hardware and were selling the first Graphic PC based turn-key CAD package with a GUI, 1,000,000 point display and complete large area plotter output system, or 300 kbyte tape output for the Gerber pattern generator (semi-masks or LCD patterns).
It is an amusing story to find out what in 1977 Jobs said to me when shown our touch input device product the iPad (our company was i Corporation).

[ffxiv gil]

Just about finished Where Good Ideas Come From you handed me at the ICAp Ocean Tomo affair. I'm sure I'll have other comments but here are a few simple ones that (except the last) should be only helpful not debatable.

[coach outlet]

No road is long with good company.*

[Supra Shoes]

Your English is damn good!

[David]

Well done, good post.
David.

[coach bags]

How can have ability dominated his sentiment? *

[Sebastien Murat]

Where do good ideas come from?....
Where do good ideas go? More specifically, how many good ideas fail to flourish because of mismanagement

[Vic Kley]

Steven,

I just viewed your WEB 2.0 talk. It seems your frustration at not being able to extract data from your E-book experiences so far is really in fore of your goals for change!

I must say your idea as expressed in the talk WEB 2.0 is rather narrow for it fails to address the creative act of selecting and using material and how value is added (or not) by this use. It's like saying there is restricted data that has the URL Link property and the vision of those who select and use the information has no value but is a meaningless snap shot of the "real thing".

As I mentioned in Napa last week this problem in large part is an area of free speech called "fair use". We are putting together a publishing and distribution solution which among other things addresses this issue by supporting "fair use" and giving the author/publisher control of the scope of use.
More information then the latter must await a private conversation.
You have my email on the Attoscopy card I gave you.

[coach outlet]

Well done and thanks to all.*

[tobias]

Fascinating book, and intriguing that you have come to the innovation space. Since Emergence which I bought probably 7 years ago I have been using your books as a source of commentary on the nature of innovation (emergent, connected, etc.) in the work I do. Seems I was following the same trail of breadcrumbs

[Orlando Remédios]

Grateful of beeing able to assist your inspired speech yesterday in Lisbon.
Just one comment for future reference: Gutenberg's invention and the revolution of the print industry was more than the press the usage of "movable type printing" which greatly decreased.

Cheers!

[Franco]

Web 2.0? What? And Web Six, when that?

[edwardboches]

You need to fix your comment system spam filter. For a writer, communicator and one who wants to start a real conversation, this is lame and shows a lack of understanding of the basics of blogging. That being said, great book. I did a post on it. Led me to get even more interested in all the thinking and writing about collaboration that is going on -- Ideo, Jump, Thomas Malone, Amaral, Uzzi, et al. Interesting comment in today's Times from Jump's CEO arguing that the brainstorm in shower does happen. Contradiction to your point, which I tend more to agree with (Hunch.) Anyway, working on content, speeches and curriculum around all of this. So thanks. But fix your comment system.

[Peter Main]

need to understand the human minds capacity to do so much good and so much bad at the same time

www.filterlessairpurifierreview.com

[Darlene Charneco]

Steven, I am just now (loving)reading your book 'Where Good Ideas Come From'..and cannot express how appropriate and parallel it is to all I have been trying express in my art!. I want so much for you to come by the show 'Self-Assembling MemoryPalace' that is up right now in SoHo and see for yourself if at all possible. Here is one photo detail of 'Epic Tale of an Idea' and a link to see a little more.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avadarlene/5357898962/ I would love to invite you more formally but don't know how and so am just writing this here in hopes that you will see it and have a chance to pop in/and or perhaps contact me. with great respect and all the very best, Darlene Charneco

[Jordans shoes]

There are many kind of love, that we should not judge with our secular emotion. Together or not, we will let fate take it to our destiny.

[wireless high speed internet providers]

In generative grammar, an abstract structure whose current form of the phrase comes from.

[Dreambox]

You are my hero, Lori. Hopefully when we get Emma to school I can focus more on the business Joolz. I think I will have in your brain.

[dreambox 500]

I apologize to all those who have offended my delicate tweet about the situation in Egypt. I have devoted my life to raise awareness of serious social problems, and after my attempt at humor to the nation have performed against the oppression out of time.

[Pet Meds]

The problem with people is people. If you feed a dog and love it, it will be your best friend, the principle difference between us.

[Julia]

The former head of BBC2 Jane Root recommends "Where Good Ideas Come From" as one of the best five books that hold the key to success:
http://thebrowser.com/interviews/jane-root-on-where-good-tv-ideas-come

[Business Coach]

You may believe these four proverbs:
He who has never hoped can never despair.
Life is measured by thought and action, not by time.
No man is useless in this world who lightens the burden of someone else.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them.

[Nike 6.0 Outlet]

A man has two ears and one mouth that he may hear much and speak little.