Chance favors the connected mind.

With a tip o' the hat to Tim Harford (who has commented on prior posts to this blog):  If you are interested in how innovation really happens, then check out Steven Johnson's upcoming book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.  You can read a good essay on it here.

Here is a TEDTalk of Johnson discussing some of the ideas:

And here is a fun 4-minute video, rapidly animating the basic idea (Ann Zerkle has pointed to these before - I think they're great): 

If you enjoyed these, you might also benefit from reading Andrew Hargadon's How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate.

Innovation is what drives greater productivity - the engine that provides prosperity in society.  But innovation - understood exactly like you've read and viewed above - depends heavily on a set of conditions we often refer to as "economic freedom."  If you're interested in this nexus, then you might enjoy Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist.  

Comments

[Ben]

Check this out... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB7DsaxpJ34&NR=1 ... (Paste to your browser... in YouTube, the title is "Steven Johnson Opens 2010 Spectrum Series")

Do you agree with his claims? Is it only a University that can provide the "coffee house network"? How do the MBM principles and mental models help us create the disciplined freedom necessary to innovate and drive creative destruction within a company?

[Ann Zerkle]

I like the idea of ideas/hunches "simmering" for a long time. It makes me think of Polanyi.

I wonder if organizations can do things like have organization-wide lunches or conferences that can simulate the connections in coffee houses.