Where Good Ideas Come From

“Sparks of brilliance, Johnson argues, are actually more like slow burns that develop in places, such as universities, that are teeming with ideas. Even wrong ideas help. An expectant genius waiting for the muse to deliver a fully formed, humanity-advancing idea into his lap can be kept waiting for a long time. Things like evolutionary theory, the internet, and the printing press did not appear miraculously in a dream. Or on a piece of burnt toast. With…the conviction that the interconnectedness of knowledge is an ‘infectious and crucial’ concept, Johnson’s model hinges on seven factors, like liquid networks, serendipity, and slow hunches…”