Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

Product Description A fascinating deep dive on innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Unexpected LifeThe printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnsons answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. Review [A] rich, integrated and often sparkling book. Mr. Johnson, who knows a thing or two about the history of science, is a first-rate storyteller.--The New York Times A vision of innovation and ideas that is resolutely social, dynamic and material...Fluidly written, entertaining and smart without being arcane.--Los Angeles TimesA magical mystery tour of the history and architecture of innovation.--The OregonianA rapid-fire tour of spaces large, small, mental, physical, and otherwise... Where Good Ideas Come From may be the ultimate distillation of his thinking on these issues... One admires the intellectual athleticism of Johnsons maneuvers here.--Boston Globe About the Author Steven Johnson is the bestselling author ofFuture Perfect,Where Good Ideas Come From,The Invention of Air,The Ghost Map, and Everything Bad is Good for You, and is the editor ofThe Innovators Cookbook. He is the founder of a variety of influential websites and writes forTime,Wired, TheNew York Times, andThe Wall Street Journal. He lives in Marin County, California, with his wife and three sons. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IntroductionREEF, CITY, WEB . . . as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poets penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.-SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Nights Dream, V.i.14-17Darwins ParadoxApril 4, 1836. Over the eastern expanse of the Indian Ocean, the reliable northeast winds of monsoon season have begun to give way to the serene days of summer. On the Keeling Islands, two small atolls composed of twenty-seven coral islands six hundred miles west of Sumatra, the emerald waters are invitingly placid and warm, their hue enhanced by the brilliant white sand of disintegrated coral. On one stretch of shore usually guarded by stronger surf, the water is so calm that Charles Darwin wades out, under the vast blue sky of the tropics, to the edge of the live coral reef that rings the island.For hours he stands and paddles among the crowded pageantry of the reef. Twenty-seven years old, seven thousand miles from London, Darwin is on the precipice, standing on an underwater peak ascending over an unfathomable sea. He is on the edge of an idea about the forces that built that peak, an idea that will prove to be the first great scientific insight of his career. And he has just begun exploring another hunch, still hazy and unformed, that will eventually lead to the intellectual summit of the nineteenth century.Around him, the crowds of the coral ecosystem dart and shimmer. The sheer variety dazzles: butterflyfish, damselfish, parrotfish, Napoleon fish, angelfish; golden anthias feeding on plankton above the cauliflower blooms of the coral; the spikes and tentacles of sea urchins and anemones. The tableau delights Darwins eye, but already his mind is reaching behind the surface display to a more profound mystery. In his account of the Beagles voyage, published four years later, Darwin would write: It is excusable to grow enthusiastic over the infinite numbers of organic beings