A Musing Bean

On Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From


“Chance favors the connected mind.” -- Steven Johnson

Points from his TED Talk, and also this YouTube video:
  • The switch from alcohol to coffee in the 1650’s in England was one of the catalysts of the Enlightenment.
  • Coffee houses were also natural environments for the sharing of ideas to flourish between people from different backgrounds.
  • The Slow Hunch: Contrary to pop culture, great ideas grow and percolate over time. E.g. Darwin had most of his theory in place for years before the “eureka" moment.
  • The story of how GPS came about: Researchers at John Hopkins tracked Sputnik from the ground. Flipped the problem over.

Takeaways & Thoughts


I'm fascinated by the idea of Better Thinking. What habits and systems can we use to think more clearly, more creatively, and more effectively?

Great ideas are collisions between smaller ideas, and with the right moment when they become most useful. Having a library of ideas to draw from is therefore essential, as is having a vibrant network of people to converse and collaborate with.

Escaping the Cage

Our thoughts are limited by our beliefs and philosophies. These preconceptions form the scaffolding that we hang our ideas off of. However, they are also a cage that limits what we can think. More insidiously, this cage is invisible to us unless we look very hard for it. The power of collaborating with a diverse network is that by considering very different points of view, we can more clearly see where the boundaries of our preconceptions lie.

Related: TED.

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