Where Good Ideas Come from

Faulty correlations, pseudo-science-y, assertions without any substantiation. I bought this book looking to understand how good ideas are formed but I was highly disappointed.

Anecdotes and history lessons aside, my first clue was when the author extols how great the NeoNurture baby incubators that use automobile parts and how they solved a real problem. I looked up NeoNurture and it turns out, they were never manufactured. Not one.

Here's what the book itself says: “We have a natural tendency to romanticize breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition.”

Looks like the author fell into his own romanticization. This was the start of my disappointment. He goes on and creates rather strange analogies such as early civilization acting like a “liquid”. He creates a 10/10 principle where he explains it takes 10 years for an idea to manifest and another 10 years for the idea to spread. Then he talks about YouTube and how they did it in 1/1 without a significant explanation why.

Johnson does a wonderful job of weaving together the tangled, complicated web of innovation and genius, taking many examples throughout history and breaking them down to strip away their “eureka!” moments and reveal their gradual, delicate, and complex formation. Inspiring and insightful and hopeful for whatever revolutions are percolating in our midst right now!