Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

Where do good ideas come from? Places that put us togeth­er. Places that allow good hunch­es to col­lide with oth­er good hunch­es, some­times cre­at­ing big break­throughs and inno­va­tions. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, this all hap­pened in Parisian salons and cof­fee hous­es. Nowa­days, it’s hap­pen­ing on the web, in places that defy your ordi­nary def­i­n­i­tion of “place.” In four ani­mat­ed min­utes, Steven John­son out­lines the argu­ment that he makes more ful­ly in his soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Inno­va­tion. The video is the lat­est from the RSAn­i­mate series.

PS: Last week, I wrote a guest post on 5 cap­ti­vat­ing RSA videos that mull over the flaws run­ning through mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. You can find it on Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time