How can you spark a new idea?
Conclusion of a Smart Essay - part 2
I believe the way we read books is far different from our everyday reading of emails, posts (like this), comments and chats. At the pace we force ourselves everyday, reading a book is an important investment of time we risk for our own delight, education, information or anything we deem important.
In the case of "Where Good Ideas come from" by Steven Johnson I believe there are many intersting inspirations that I tried to enlist in my first (ever) post (link is hereunder). I lately realized it was too hermetic to be easily sharable, so here is a more understandable review.
In the book I found these chapters the most inspiring:
- #2 - Liquid Networks i.e. nor too solid/rigid to leave some room for new ideas, nor aeriform otherwise there would have nothing to refer to - a network evolve from itslef that grows everyday (e.g. social networking)
- #3 - Slow Intuition i.e. take the time you need to trigger you creativity. This approach is brillantly explained by John Cleese in one of his many speeches on creativity (e.g. after minute 6:09 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMpdPrm6Ul4)
- #4 - Randon collection of data far from your field, so to develop new ways and ideas for your field. Your creativity will make the connections, mostly unconsciously. That is why some companies (e.g. 3M, Google) keep employee programs where for 10/20% of their working time they are encouraged to practice multidisciplinary serendipity
#5 - Not being afraid of errors, but being afraid of making too few. Errors are a great source of creativity if we know how to analyze them and turn then to our favour.The book gives a clear insight of those factors that allowed (and still allow) good ideas to come to light, as it happened in history.
In the book you would find other simple reccomendations that are often forgotten or underestimated like taking a coffee break longer than usual as Watson and Crick often did and this probably lead them to discovered the Double-Helix structure of DNA in the 1950s.
If you therefore would like to get new ideas, the author suggests to take a walk, keep a diary (but with some chaos in it), be curious, get part to new clubs and mix up, borrow, reinvent and recycle as much as you can.
In this overclocked world this is not an easy task, but if we could get there, we would surely have not just better idear, but also better living.