Steve Johnson (follow @stevenbjohnson on Twitter) is a writer and speaker who specialises in the field of ideas, connectivity and networks. He’s currently touring the US and beyond promoting his new book Where Good Ideas Come From, in which he attempts to find out why certain environments seem to be disproportionally effective at generating and sharing great ideas.Here’s a beautifully animated promo video for Steve’s new book, which sketches his theory of creative spaces. Please take a few minutes to watch it all the way through. It’s awesome:
We think the ideas that Steve touches upon in this video fit in brilliantly with the Organic Development CAN-do philosophy (familiarise yourself with part one here and part two here):
1.Steve says:
“Good ideas normally come from the collision between smaller hunches”
OD says: Dead right. This is another way of emphasising the importance of connectivity in a network. If nodes in a network are densely interconnected, they can communicate with each other (or share ‘hunches’) more effectively. This increases the likelyhood of fruitful ‘collisions’ and makes the network a productive, creative system.
2.Steve says:
We should “Create systems that allow hunches to come together”
OD says: This is another important part of our philosophy. To enable effective communication, you need to create spaces in which informal, non-hierarchical networks can develop. At Organic Development, we’re used to creating a range of spaces for clients - from dedicated social networking sites to resource-sharing platforms - which allow people to share ‘hunches’ and generate great ideas through collaboration.
3.Steve says:
“Ideas need time to incubate”
OD says: Steve’s spot on when he says you can’t rush a good idea. To expand on this point, it’s very unlikely that you’ll find the perfect solution to a problem first time round either. Persistence and patience are incredibly important in work and life in general. Keep trying, and if you get stuck, give your brain a break and move on to something else (or sleep on it). When you return to the problem, you’ll have a fresh perspective and it will be much easier to solve.
Want to hear more about where good ideas come from? Click here to watch Steve’s enlightening speech from the 2010 TED conference
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