Book Review: Where Good Ideas Come From (Steven Johnson)

Steven Johnson returns once again in print after his insightful, bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and The Invention of Air to address the universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? He answers in his infectious, culturally ubiquitous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture.

Steven Johnson is a science writer, once a rare breed confined to the academic domain and textbooks. With the emergence of science and social journalism, and journalists venturing into investigative science and social sciences, this genre has become popular with the mainstream reader in the past decade. Thomas Friedman’s best selling, The World Is Flat is already in multiple editions and variants have emerged (updated, expanded and made contemporary) including the 3.0 version!

Steven Johnson has made his book, Where Good Ideas Come From highly readable, if you enjoy:

1)    Innovation and innovative practices

2)    History of inventors

3)    Inventions and their origins/inspirations (Appendix covers all major inventions from the years 1400-2000)

4)    The merging of theories (evolution), chemistry, ecosystem science, social history and geography.

And, even if you did only possess only a cursory knowledge of each of the disciplines mentioned, you would still discover something useful. How are coral formations one of the most ecological clever and sound structures in architecture (and how it clicked with Darwin)? Why were some of the key inventions of the last few centuries (like the World Wide Web), actually collective innovations? Is invention still predisposed in the realm of solitude for the Lone Wolf, or is it a product of Collective Thought? In other words, for every secrecy-bound company like Apple, are there others equally successful that are the antithesis: open environments, networked, non-marketplace-bound products and services?

This book is also suited for soft-necked, armchair, workstation-bound, intrapreneurial types – those delegated with the responsibility of engaging an innovative culture at their workplace. Would this dream be realised, or is it still a pipe-dream - a small horn tooted, perfunctorily, by uncreative, left-brain dominant managers? Johnson attempts to address these issues, and I believe his argument goes full circle, and he succeeds on an optimistic note, however with some useful caveats. Johnson identifies seven principles for the genesis of ideas, and the conditions for development of good ideas for our careers, companies, personal lives, society and culture. He makes us reconsider our paradigms about the concept and business of invention and innovation.

His final chapter, The Fourth Quadrant may sound familiar with fans of financial-guru/author Robert Kiyosaki, yet it has nothing in common except a quadrant. The simple 2X2 matrix covers the relationship of individual/networked inventiveness and market/non-market orientations. It threads all the principles he proposed earlier seamlessly. You may wish to link it with other models of product differentiation, financial literacy, and brand values.

Highly recommended.