Overview of the innovation book, Where Good Ideas Come From

1. WHERE GOOD IDEAS
COME FROM
The Natural History of Innovation; Author: Steven Johnson
By: Brittany Barhite, Yusifu Bangura & Danielle Filipchuk

2. “We have a natural tendency to romanticize
breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas
transcending their surroundings…But ideas are works of
bricolage (…) We take the ideas we’ve inherited or that
we’ve stumbled across, and we jigger them together
into some
new shape.”
-Steve Johnson

3. OVERVIEW VIDEO
• Click on the video image below to view a short video from author Steve Johnson
• He provides an overview of his theory on where good ideas come from
4:33 PM

4. MAIN IDEA OF THE BOOK
• Johnson believes that in life, a series of shared properties and patterns recur again
and again in unusually fertile environments
• The more we embrace these patterns in our private or work habits, the better we will
be at tapping our extraordinary capacity for innovative thinking

5. INNOVATIVE ENVIRONMENTS
• Johnson compares these patterns in life to the patterns in the coral reef
• You might find a dozen fish in the ocean if you were lucky, but you are guaranteed a thousand
fish on a reef.
• A coral reef is an open, fertile platform environment that allows animals to build off of each other
• Somewhere between a million to ten million distinct species live in coral reefs around the
world, and yet these reefs only occupy one-tenth of 1% of the planet’s surface
• In other words, despite its small size, it has an environment that can sustain and support the
existence of the varied species because it is an OPEN, FERTILE ENVIRONMENT
Just like coral reefs house millions of species because they are a
fertile, open environment, Johnson believes innovation flourishes in
open, fertile environments.

6. FERTILE INNOVATIVE ENVIRONMENT
EXAMPLE
• While a history of innovation shows that there USED to be a ten year period
between inventions, technology has reduced the time it takes to create inventions
or ideas
• That’s because technology like the Internet is a fertile environment where the
patterns of innovations can take place
• Openness and connectivity are more valuable to
innovation than purely competitive mechanism
• In other words, we can think more creatively if we
open our minds to the many connected environments
that make creativity possible
• It is better to share ideas by connecting with others
than to protect them away from others.

7. Chance favors the connected mind.
-Steve Johnson

8. SLOW HUNCH
• Sharing ideas in an open environment leads to a slow hunch
• Rarely inventions are created through Eureka moments
• Typically, interconnectedness nurture great ideas, hence most great ideas come into
the world half-baked, more “hunch” than revelation
6:02 PM

9. • Open networks create environments where partial
ideas can connect
• While not all hunches turnout to be great innovations,
they have the potential to one-day resurge to be great
hunches that can become great innovations
• Given enough nourishment, and a conducive
environment, to keep it growing, hunches can flourish

10. SERENDIPITY
Providing environments for the slow hunch

11. Let it find you.
SERENDIPITY
The effect by which one
accidentally stumbles upon
something truly wonderful,
especially while looking for
something entirely
unrelated.

12. WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE
TO FIND SERENDIPITY?
Author, Steven Johnson said whenever he actually sits down at his desk, the innovation
seems to grind to a halt!
Not at your desk!

13. FOSTERING SERENDIPITY
• You need a clear head to have
an idea
• Taking walks, showers, and reading
can help clear the head
• Organizations should encourage
reading sabbaticals
• Brainstorming sessions also open the
mind to different perspectives
• Personal learning environments
provides archives for your ideas and
resources

14. HAS TECHNOLOGY
INCREASED OR DECREASED
SERENDIPITOUS DISCOVERY?

15. TECHNOLOGY & SERENDIPITY
• Technology has changed how we find information
• We used to use pull library books off the shelves
which led to “unplanned discoveries,” but the Internet
also supplies an “endless supply of surprising
information to stumble across” (p. 120).
• Some argue that we now seek out directed
information through search engines that is filtered and
vetted, unlike the unplanned journey the library
provided us
• Thus, some believe the Internet has
reduced serendipity
• However, others argue technology supports
serendipitous discovery because there is more
information at our fingertips
• Perhaps, it depends on how you use the resources at
your fingertips?

16. JOURNAL CORNER
• Take a second to think about fostering your serendipity.
• Where do you typically innovate the best?
• As a leader, what can you do to foster serendipity at your work, classroom or
volunteer organizations?
• Jot down a few notes before moving on in the presentation. You will be prompted
to post your respond in our Blackboard post at the end.

17. ERROR IN INNOVATION

18. “Mistakes are an inevitable step on the path to true
innovation” (p. 148).
“Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to
explore” (p. 137).
-Steven Johnson

19. ERROR & PERSISTENCE
• Hunches and ideas require ingenuity and
persistence
• Trial and error over a significant period of
time is a necessary part of the innovation
journey
• However, error is normally NOT enough
• With error there must be an epiphany where
we challenge ourselves and our
assumptions

20. NOISE & ERROR
While you would think that innovation would be strongly correlated with the values of
accuracy, clarity and focus, research has revealed a paradoxical truth about innovation:
Good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a certain amount of
noise and error. This helps with brainstorming and developing new ideas, even off of
inaccurate data.

21. NOISE=BRAIN MODE
Definition: When the brain is engaged in chaos-mode of
information, new ideas are likely to emerge with the noise that is
associated with chaos-mode.

22. EXAPTATION

23. EXAPTATION
When something is developed for one purpose, but is then
borrowed to fulfill a different function…a form of evolution.

24. EXAPTATION
• Collisions that happen when different fields of expertise converge in some
shared physical or intellectual space; it sparks creativity
• Example: the Internet was developed for the purpose of scholarship in the
1990’s and evolved/exapted into a mode for shopping, music, video, etc.

25. COFFEE HOUSE
MODEL OF CREATIVITY

26. COFFEE HOUSE MODEL
• Broad networks of people with diverse expertise in the same space talking through
ideas.
• Working with people who have different perspectives than you influences
innovation
• Research has shown diverse groups are much more innovative because it triggers
connections that may lead to new ideas
• It also promotes the chaos-mode stage of brain activity as it is more messy and
more chaotic
• Example: During product development meetings, Apple has variety of employees
with diverse expertise and backgrounds involved

27. PLATFORM

28. PLATFORM BUILDERS
• Platform building is a kind of exercise in emergent behavior- whereby larger entities,
patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler
entities that themselves do not exhibit such properties.
Dams
•Beavers build dams
•House fogs, lizards, geese, etc.
Coral Reef
•Scleractinia polyp contribute to building underwater colonies
•Somewhere between a million to ten million distinct species live in coral reefs around the world, despite
the facts these reefs only occupy one-tenth of 1% of the planet’s surface
World Wide Web
•Layers upon layers of platforms buried beneath each page
•Can easily be built on top of

29. WORLD WIDE WEB
• The World Wide Web is an open platform
• Third parties can integrate with the original platform originally
• Open platforms can decrease the cost of innovation dramatically and share
knowledge easily
• Open platforms improve innovation
“The real benefit of stacked platforms lies in the knowledge you
no longer need to have. You don’t need to know how to send
signals to satellites or parse geo-data to send that tweet
circulating through the Web’s ecosystem…The songbird sitting in
an abandoned woodpecker’s nest doesn’t need to know how to
drill a hole into the side of a poplar, or how to fall a hundred-foot
tree. That is the generative power of open platforms.” Steve
Johnson

30. THE FOURTH QUADRANT

31. FIELD OF INNOVATION
• Johnson wanted to classify the top 200 innovations in the field of innovation from
the past 600 years in order to understand what type of environment encourages
innovation the most.
• The classifications were:
1. Market/Individual: Private corporation or solo entrepreneur that wanted to capitalize
from sale of invention
2. Market/Network: Multiple private firms interact and want to capitalize from sale of
invention
3. Non-Market/Individual: Individuals who wished ideas to flow freely into infosphere
4. Non-Market/Network: Open-source or academic environments where ideas can be
built upon and reimagined in large, collaborative networks

32. RESULTS
• Insert graphic

33. RESULTS SUMMARY
• The fourth quadrant should be a reminder that more than one formula exists for
innovation
• The wonders of modern life did not emerge exclusively from the proprietary clash
between private firms
• They also emerged from open networks

34. CONCLUSION
Johnson says while you may not be able to turn your organization into an open
platform coral reef, you do have the ability as a leader to create environments on the
scale of every day life
In the work places you inhabit
In the way you consume media
In the way you augment your memory

35. JOHNSON’S CHECKLIST TO
EMBRACING INNOVATION
Go for a walk
Cultivate hunches
Write everything down
But keep your folders messy
Embrace serendipity
Make generative mistakes
Take on multiple hobbies
Frequent coffeehouses
Follow the links
Let others build on your ideas
Borrow, recycle, reinvent
Build a tangled bank

36. JOURNAL CORNER
• Taking a look at Johnson’s Innovation Checklist, what do you do well as leader from
this list? What could you improve upon?
• How can you use technology to improve innovation in your every day life?
• Post the answers to these questions in our Blackboard post.