Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

From The Week of December 19, 2010

While Mr. Johnson is, at times, a bit too convinced of the importance of his own arguments, he has never failed to engage me in a fascinating discussion, be it science, truth, or disease. Where Good Ideas Come From, being an examination into the nature of invention, is no exception to. In fact, it may be, for me, his best work yet.

Mr. Johnson argues, here, that the West misunderstands the nature of invention. Being a society founded on individualism, a thick vein of hero worship runs through our culture. We celebrate successful people because we might someday be among them, feted by the same admiring press and adoring crowds. Among those we hail are inventors, imagining them to be singleminded geniuses, working doggedly to improve our lives with the fruits of their powerful minds. But though some of our modern conveniences were invented this way -- the air conditioner and the pacemaker to name two --, Mr. Johnson has assembled research that claims the opposite is true, that a preponderance of the technologies we use today have manifested from open systems. He defines an open system as a collaborative effort to bring something into being. These systems are typically found in universities, where the technical and intellectual dilemmas that need to be knocked down to invent something can be shared among several bright and inventive minds which, collectively, may hit upon an insight the original idea-holder missed.

Though this notion may seem conveniently egalitarian, it stands to reason. Many minds bent to the solving of a single problem may not always hit upon a solution as quickly, or as inventively, as a single genius working alone, but the overall productivity and success rate of the group should outperform the one. After all, the world is not blessed with millions upon millions of Einsteins, but it does have millions upon millions of people who might be 75 percent as smart as Einstein. Train the minds of a dozen of these three-quarter Einsteins upon a problem and will they not do better than one, smarter mind? Though Mr. Johnson spends considerable time working to dispel the cultural misconception of the lone inventor, he also points out that open systems outperform other models such as corporate, profit-driven endeavors and government-directed efforts. Bureaucracy seems to sicken invention rather than aid its proliferation.

There's a joyousness about Where Good Ideas Come From that is hard to ignore. We should celebrate individualism; it's an important way we know that we live in a mobile society where anyone can achieve their dream. But individualism cannot provide the same kind of communal, spiritual nourishment that flows out of a collaborative project masterfully done. That cooperation is what knits society together. It should be properly valued. Mr. Johnson makes an excellent and clear case without indulging in too many digressions. It's lovely work. (4/5 Stars)

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