Status Updates From Where Good Ideas Come From

"Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore."

Serendipity

Book effectively ends at 62%: Last 38% of the Kindle version is given to notes, acknowledgements, a bibliography and the [unlinked] index. However Johnson takes his time with his concluding remarks, and I was very satisfied; best to ignore the progress relevance altogether.

"To my mind, the great question for our time is whether large organizations—public and private, governments and corporations alike—can better harness the innovation turbine of fourth-quadrant systems... it is the public sector that I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies." Agree.

1. encouragement does not necessarily lead to creativity. Collisions do—the collisions that happen when different fields of expertise converge in some shared physical or intellectual space. That’s where the true sparks fly. 2. That's the unpredictable power of exaptations. Chance favors the connected mind. 3. Modern scientific paradigms are rarely overthrown. Instead, they are built upon. They create a platform.

Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore... Read more at location 1571

Johnson's talent at describing scientific condition (e.g. the big deal about "primordial soup" as liquid network) make me believe I had very sub-standard science teachers in school... my lessons weren't anything like this.

Enjoying this immensely, and taking my time to annotate it in both Kindle and my Evernote-keeping. Johnson shares very well written stories which highlight scientific history while illustrating his concepts, the points he wishes to make.

Thoroughly enjoying this book. Had to force myself to stop at the end of a chapter so I could get to bed at a decent hour. Love the ideas, the style, everything.

EWUE

It gets better.

Saying that "many scientists believe that life may have come from another planet" is pushing it.

I couldn't stand the typography in the printed version, now I can't stand the narrator in the audio.

I'm finding this book utterly fascinating so far in its look at environment as an integral part of innovation.

- sleep to combine ideas - digest breakthrough ideas throughout years

Realmente interesante, a pesar de que a veces me pierde con detalles matematicos y cientificos excesivos. Pero inspirador :D

"Chance favors the connected mind."

I'm already totally in love with this book 50 pages in.

Thoroughly researched and eye opening book about what sparks innovation. Much more to read, but so far, so great.

Okay, okay I take it back. Now I see where this book is headed.

Not sure what to make if the book so far. I hope all these scientific anecdotes are a precursor to something bigger; something in the creative field maybe. One can only hope.

The scientist, Stuart Kauffman has a suggested name for the set of all those first-order combinations of innovation, "the adjacent possible". The "adjacent possible"a shadow of the future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.

113 of 335 in iBooks

Read on the plane to (Friday) and from (Sunday) News Foo.

Finished intro on plane earlier and also started chapter one (The Adjacent Possible), which I just finished tonight. Liquid Networks is next for chapter 2.

We will see if I actually manage to read this.

Conclusion is almost a self-help styled summary more than a powerful logical supposition. A little disappointing since other people have already put forth the thrust of his seven qualities of innovation, but a reasonable expectation for a journalistic author like Johnson. Still, would have been nice for him to claim something difficult to accept, if only to answer Where Good Ideas Come From with a more concise point.

Shares elements with the other "histories" I've read recently, notably Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and Kevin Kelly's tech history in "What Technology Wants"

Serendipity chapter advocates "reading holidays", a concentrated exposure to many different ideas such as in reading books in bunches at a time, to cultivate serendipitous creative discovery. Hard not to like that idea since it helps justify what I've been doing all year!

After tempting me from the bottom of my To Read pile, finally cracking this bad boy open.