Book SummaryWhere Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Where Good Ideas Come From

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson explains that good ideas and novel innovations are largely the result of social collaboration. For an idea to be good, it must be built upon accumulated knowledge and be put forward at a time when users can conceive of how to use the idea and when the needed resources for the idea are available. Ideas can result from a combination of underlying unfinished ideas fed over time, sudden inspiration, mistakes, and the practice of using other innovations for purposes distinct from their original functions.

Steven Johnson is a best-selling author and...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary How Ideas Develop

According to Johnson, good ideas don’t emerge miraculously from nothing. Instead, they build on existing knowledge and ideas. If every writer had to create their own writing system, or if every app developer had to reinvent the internet, we wouldn’t be able to progress as a society and would be stuck with only the most basic ideas. The more we innovate and create, the more we draw on established knowledge to innovate further, enabling us to come up with increasingly advanced ideas.

(Shortform note: In The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking, Edward Burger and Michael Starbird expand on this idea and suggest that studying how an idea has developed over time can help you come up with new ideas. Doing this gives you a better understanding of the idea’s underlying concepts and also leads you to consider innovations for an idea even after it seems to be completed.)

These previous ideas provide platforms of knowledge on which to build. Platforms can be physical—such as a piece of technology like a...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary Developing Ideas Over Time

Most ideas take a long time to develop and require a lot of patience. They begin as suspicions, hunches, or ideas that aren’t yet complete, and often, they need to be combined with other people’s unfinished ideas to take shape—which is part of why networks are so important. Ideas like this can brew for years or decades before they find the other ideas that complete them and push them into the realm of the adjacent possible.

(Shortform note: It’s easy to get impatient or frustrated when you have an incomplete idea brewing that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. This can lead you to fall prey to the creative cliff illusion—the misconception that most of your good ideas happen early and that, once they stop flowing quickly, you’re “out” of ideas. This can lead you to give up too soon and abandon ideas that aren’t quite complete. Research suggests that the greatest number of our good ideas occur near the end of any given period of idea generation,...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary Creating Ideas From Sudden Insights

Sometimes ideas can click suddenly into place as a result of inspiration or insight, writes Johnson. Rather than coming together purely from steady, incremental development, an idea that you’re mulling over can be spontaneously completed by an epiphany.

(Shortform note: The feeling of having an idea click into place from an epiphany can be extremely satisfying and often causes people to feel grateful for the insight. Experts recommend practicing introspection and opening your mind up to personal change in order to prompt more epiphanies.)

Johnson explains how the brain goes through periods of neural synchronization—called neural phase locking—that alternate with periods of chaos. During neural phase lock, the brain’s neural networks are firing simultaneously at the same frequency. In contrast, there are other periods where all the neurons are firing completely out of sync with each other. During these periods of chaos, scientists believe the brain is making links and associations that it wouldn’t normally make, resulting in new ideas and connections. Research into neural phase locking in...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary Forming Ideas by Making Mistakes

Johnson argues that mistakes can lead to better ideas and greater innovations. Many inventions throughout history have been the result of mistakes, including [restricted term], the daguerreotype, and the pacemaker. He suggests that making mistakes and then exploring why those mistakes happened makes people smarter. Mistakes open us up to new ways of thinking and prompt us to explore additional ideas in the adjacent possible.

(Shortform note: Research suggests that you learn more from mistakes if you believe you can learn from your mistakes, as opposed to believing that your intelligence is fixed and that mistakes are a personal failing. This suggests that learning from mistakes has more to do with your mindset and openness to exploring what went wrong than the simple act of making the mistake itself.)

Johnson also describes a study carried out by Berkeley professor Charlan Nemeth that showed that mistakes in group settings (or networks) cause people to think more flexibly. In the study, a group of...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary Innovating Ideas Through Exaptations

Johnson also describes how exaptations—using a tool or trait in a context that’s different from the one it was originally intended for—can lead to innovation. Exaptation is a term from evolutionary biology for when a trait that evolved for one purpose changes function and is used for another purpose. Johnson gives the example of how feathers initially evolved to keep animals warm, but when they began flying, feathers turned out to be a perfect tool to facilitate gliding through the air.

(Shortform note: Some scientists question whether exaptation is actually distinct from adaptation, suggesting that if you trace any given evolutionary trait back far enough, you’ll find that it developed from the coopting of a structure for a function different from its original function. This would make the distinction between adaptation and exaptation arbitrary and irrelevant. Others note that it’s a term that’s not frequently used in scientific literature, possibly because of its unclear definition. They say, however,...

Where Good Ideas Come From Summary Capitalism’s Effect on Ideas and Innovation

According to Johnson, good ideas come largely from social interaction and the sharing of knowledge through networks. He points out that, especially in the modern world, there are limits to information sharing, particularly when there is a financial incentive to keep information secret through things like copyright, patents, and intellectual property laws. The competitive nature of capitalism encourages companies to keep their innovations under wraps so that other companies can’t take those same innovations and use them for their own benefit. Johnson suggests that this tendency may limit our innovative ability as a society.

Johnson looks at innovations throughout history and categorizes them based on whether they were market-driven or non-market-driven, and also whether they were created by an individual or by a network of people. Based on his assessment of hundreds of major inventions and innovations throughout history, he sees a shift over time: during the Renaissance, most innovations were non-market-driven and developed by an individual. This trend gradually shifted and today, most ideas are still non-market-driven but are developed by networks. He suggests that this...

Shortform Exercise: Find Your Own Great Idea

Johnson both explains the process of developing ideas and offers many ways to help you create them. Use these concepts to come up with a great idea of your own.

First, identify a problem you want to solve or a hunch you have. What is something you know could be better, even if you don’t yet know how? Does your favorite video game have a frustrating game mechanic? Or have you noticed a flaw in your company’s organizational structure?