Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation Hardcover - 2010 - 1st Edition
by Steven Johnson
One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?
With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.
Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.
Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.
Summary
The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the batterythese 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 Johnson’s 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 applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. Where Good Ideas Come From gives us both an important new understanding of the history of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.
Steven Johnson's newest book, Future Perfect, is now available from Riverhead Books.
Details
- Title Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation
- Author Steven Johnson
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition number 1st
- Edition 1
- Pages 336
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Riverhead Books, New York
- Date 2010-10-05
- ISBN 9781594487712 / 1594487715
- Weight 1.19 lbs (0.54 kg)
- Dimensions 9.2 x 6.36 x 1.13 in (23.37 x 16.15 x 2.87 cm)
- Ages 18 to UP years
- Grade levels 13 - UP
- Library of Congress subjects Creative thinking
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 2010023481
- Dewey Decimal Code 303.484
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