Where Good Ideas Come From
TED Program Analysis #3
Where Good Ideas Come From
People love to believe in that eureka moment, where a good idea unexpectedly comes out of nowhere. In reality, ideas are born in very different situations. In “Where Good Ideas Come From”, Steve Johnson explores the history of innovation to discover specific surprising patterns that explain the root of good ideas, and what we can do to increase the ingenuity of society.
Johnson brings up a photo of the Grand Café in Oxford to show that this was the first coffeehouse to open in England in 1650. The purpose of this was to show the relationship between the coffeehouse and the crucial development of the Enlightenment, which was one of the great intellectual flowerings of the last 500 years . Johnson describes the role in the birth of the Enlightenment due to what people were actually drinking before this period. He describes a population of people that were effectively drunk all day, due to the condition of the water; leading alcohol to be the beverage of choice. As people switched from alcohol to coffee and tea (a depressant to a stimulant), naturally people would become more attentive, keener, and would as a result be able to produce more amazing ideas.
In relation to Jason Fried’s talk about why people can’t get any work done at work, the architecture of space is crucial to the development of creativity. Johnson poses the question, “What are the environments that lead to unusual levels of innovation, unusual levels of creativity … What‘s the kind of environmental, what is the space of creativity?” Johnson explains that innovation and creativity are fractal: they transpire by following the same patterns throughout the world, whether it’s the Internet, a city, or a coral reef. Culture evolves the same way nature does. More particularly, the world proves in both culture and nature that innovation has its best chance of happening when ideas are connected, not protected.
As human beings, we tend to
Where Good Ideas Come From
People love to believe in that eureka moment, where a good idea unexpectedly comes out of nowhere. In reality, ideas are born in very different situations. In “Where Good Ideas Come From”, Steve Johnson explores the history of innovation to discover specific surprising patterns that explain the root of good ideas, and what we can do to increase the ingenuity of society.
Johnson brings up a photo of the Grand Café in Oxford to show that this was the first coffeehouse to open in England in 1650. The purpose of this was to show the relationship between the coffeehouse and the crucial development of the Enlightenment, which was one of the great intellectual flowerings of the last 500 years . Johnson describes the role in the birth of the Enlightenment due to what people were actually drinking before this period. He describes a population of people that were effectively drunk all day, due to the condition of the water; leading alcohol to be the beverage of choice. As people switched from alcohol to coffee and tea (a depressant to a stimulant), naturally people would become more attentive, keener, and would as a result be able to produce more amazing ideas.
In relation to Jason Fried’s talk about why people can’t get any work done at work, the architecture of space is crucial to the development of creativity. Johnson poses the question, “What are the environments that lead to unusual levels of innovation, unusual levels of creativity … What‘s the kind of environmental, what is the space of creativity?” Johnson explains that innovation and creativity are fractal: they transpire by following the same patterns throughout the world, whether it’s the Internet, a city, or a coral reef. Culture evolves the same way nature does. More particularly, the world proves in both culture and nature that innovation has its best chance of happening when ideas are connected, not protected.
As human beings, we tend to