Where Good Ideas Come from ─ The Natural History of Innovation

We all know a good idea when we see one. Cubic equations, the printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery, Google---these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kinds of environments make them more likely? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the groundbreaking ideas that push forward our careers, our lives, our society, our culture?

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson tackles these questions, and the answers he discovers are revelatory and convincing. With an infectious, culturally omnivorous style, Johnson uses his fluency in fields from neurobiology to urban studies to Internet culture to identify the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and to trace them across time and disciplines.

Building on his acclaimed, bestselling narratives of historical innovators, The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air, Johnson examines how innovation can accelerate under certain circumstances, how physical environments can affect and enhance great ideas, bringing people and ideas together. From Darwin to Freud's salon to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

What he finds gives us both an important new understanding of the roots of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthrough.

Steven Johnson is the author of the bestsellers The Invention of Air, The Ghost Map, Everything Bad Is Good for You, and Mind Wide Open, as well as Emergence and Interface Culture. He is the founder of a variety of influential websites---most recently, outside in---and writes for Time, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Brooklyn, with his wife and three sons.