Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson is an outstanding book exploring the realms of creativity. Johnson traces the history of innovation from the early inventors through today, and attempts to determine how best to foster invention. Some of his results are somewhat surprising, as he finds that large cities have been one of the leading indicators of the places innovation springs from. He also explores how the internet has become the place for some of the collaboration previously possible only in large cities.

While small companies and academia may be able to put into practice his recommendations for fostering innovation, I doubt that many large companies will be willing to take the long term view required as they tend to be too focused on quarterly results, to worry about long term creativity.