Where Good Ideas Come From

The Natural History of Innovation

By: Steven Johnson

Narrated by: Erik Singer

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?

Critic reviews

Stimulating and insightful ... a huge diversity of bright ideas—Financial Times

Johnson develops his provocative thesis in a book that is lucid and ... brilliant.—New Scientist

[An] exhilarating, idea-thirsty book ... full of intriguing facts.—Sunday Times

Doesn’t really Understand but good

This was interesting but the personality of the writer was evident in his philosophy of being against intellectual property. He takes a communist view of that when it is not like that. You have to encourage people who are inscrutable and difficult to understand and not able to negotiate the social world very well. These are the creators. Like it or not, the pioneer spirit and high intelligence and motivation for truth are extremely rare, and if you give authority to those who simply want to make a living, then they drag us all down. We need these people who do these things and we need to support them. I know people who predicted the intellectual history of the west 30 years ago but no one listened to them because of the “lowest common denominator” cacophony of voices which TRANSMIT interesting ideas and therefore stimulate the creative thinkers.

The problem is that people don’t know what they don’t know... and so they actually locked up Marconi in an insane asylum after he began talking about his idea for radio. In a more current sense, we ignore people who don’t have degrees when getting a higher degree REQUIRES conformity to the current view.

I think this book is excuse making for the proliferation of people who decide that they know what “thinking” is because they have a degree. It’s like the same old social patterns of religion declaring that it knows truth. He cites Kuhn, without really understanding what Kuhn is saying about social forces.

So if you know that going in, it’s a stimulating read—ironically by accident in just the way he touts in the book, which supports that part of the ideas which is really good. That’s the best part of this—how ideas are found by accident. I know why this happens so there is much more to the story and I wrote a critical review because this book was worth it.

I highly recommend this book even with the “everybody wins” or “everyone gets the creativity out of the blue because that feels good” assertion, Lol. MUCH better than most but not always for the reasons that the author intended. Much love.

Fascinating

An excellent book that is unfortunately overshadowed by the narrator's poor execution of a "British" accent. I'm not sure why that's necessary? Historical people are not characters. Just read the book, please.

On Serendipity and its role in innovation

This audio book is a great summary on innovation both in nature, science and the arts. I got the Kindle edition for note taking and reviewing concepts.

Stimulating view of the history of innovation and the major factors that help build a “tangled bank”.

Important insights to exploding the myth of the solitary genius has the major driver of innovation in the modern market economy.

Listening to this book is a GOOD IDEA 👌

Excellent, from start to finish, especially for entrepreneurs. The conclusion is my favorite of all the chapters.