This is THE BEST BOOK I read in 2010. PERIOD. I am pleased to recognize Steven Johnson's work, Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation, (Riverhead Books - Published by The Penguin Group New York, NY Copyright © 2010 by Steven Johnson).
In an era when the U.S. requires some creative thinkers to point the way ahead, I urge you and yours to devour this work. This work is timely, a shape-shifter and contains, in my opinion, the type of thinking required for re-evaluating the current foundation, energy and trajectory applicable to individuals, organizations (BOTH public and private sector), entrepreneurs, diplomats, inventors, faith-based communities etc.
What's the thesis of this work? Listen to Steven Johnson:
"If there is a single maxim that runs through this book's arguments, it is that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them. Like the free market itself, the case for restricting the flow of innovation has long been buttressed by appeals to the "natural " order of things. But the truth is, when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than more open-ended environments. Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete." P.22 (emphasis is mine).
The U.S. has always been heralded as the global center for innovation, technological breakthroughs and the quality of a university system that attracts the finest minds from around the world. At present, the U.S. seems to be struggling with a paucity of good ideas and its infrastructure - that has historically produced global admiration (educational achievement, patents, new industries, technologies, strategic partnerships and economic prowess) - has been characterized by a myriad of measures as "in decline."
This book stirred my patriotic fervor, as well as my competitive and creative juices. It didn't just stir me up - it somehow rearranged some things for me - at a soul level. It is a uniquely hopeful book - a message of tangible, practical hope for global citizens faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges of survival and daily life.
As Johnson writes, Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives. P.112
Thus, I am NOT going to litter this review with too many excerpts from Johnson's work that would encourage you to make a judgment that simply reading a review of it was somehow sufficient. Here's what happened to me after I read Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation -- I immediately went out and devoured two of Johnson's previous, acclaimed works The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map.
From time to time, cultures produce thinkers whose ideas are simply essential, timely and (hopefully) infectious. These people and their ideas seem to rise up at times during certain historical epochs when they are desperately needed -- and may be deemed counter intuitive to the mainstream thinking that seems to be widely accepted.
As Johnson says in The Ghost Map: "The river of intellectual progress is not defined purely by the steady flow of good ideas begetting better ones; it follows the topography that has been carved out for it by external factors. Sometimes that topography throws up so many barricades that the river backs up for a while." P. 135
Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation is a force that pierces the barricades that are currently preventing the natural flow of human ingenuity from proceeding as constructively and as freely as it might. This book is inhabited by the essential inertia that is fundamental to our present and our future - individually and collectively.
I can unequivocally declare this work to be The Best Book I read in 2010.
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2010
- Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2011
Top reviews from other countries
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Damien HartmannReviewed in France on May 29, 2017
Une perspective éclairante sur la génération des innovations
- Chris Mc.Reviewed in Canada on November 10, 2015
Really good read with interesting facts about ideas and the thought ...
