Required reading people! Get this book.

Didn't complete it. Probably got better, but never captured me enough to keep going.

A little simplistic and definitely dated at this point, but the final chapter takes it up to 4 stars. A passionate and well-reasoned defense of open innovation.

This was a good read. It has some great ancedotes and insights into how good ideas have developed over the past 400 years. The slow hunch, the adjacent possible and the reef.

He also does a good job in looking at how ideas have changed in the past 50 years with the rise of the internet and information sharing. Although it can get dry in spots, it's a really good read, i recommend it

- Focus on the adjacent possible
- Innovations often accrete into high value due to flow of ideas across networks
- Exaptation is powerful source of new ideas and works by cross-pollination of ideas
- Interesting comparison of the primordial soup that enables amino acid formation and recombination and the dream state which enables recombination of ideas into new forms/solutions.
- Great breakdown into quadrants in final chapter of ideas that were (not) market/network based.

Absolutely worth reading. Gives great perspective, superbly interesting and creative. Explaines origin of good/great ideas in a very simple, yet inspiring way. Love it.

A brilliant look at ideas and innovation that have changed the game. Johnson uses case studies that we all know and admire but relays an enchanting account of where they came from.
By comparing our workplace/city/ or any place that requires ideation to a coral reef, he establishes the ideal environment for churning out million dollar ideas; open liquid networks. The key steps that go into producing that one good idea have been looked at, I do sincerely now believe that the 'eureka moment' is a highly rare event erroneously broadcast as a more common occurrence.

I think “how we got to now” covers a lot of the same material but more condensed and engaging. There’s a lot of ideas here, but it really rambles to get us there and is sometimes hard to follow.

copying from another review for my own reference on key takeaways:

The Adjacent Possible
• Good ideas are constrained by the “parts” (physical or conceptual materials) and skills that surround them.
• Ideas are limited by the “adjacent possible”; the realm of options made reachable by previous ideas.
• The best environments for creating good ideas are those that help people expose the adjacent possible, by exposing a diverse sample of mechanical or conceptual parts, and encouraging novel ways of recombining them.
• Bad environments punish experimentation, obscure branches of possibility, and make the current state so satisfying that no one explores.
• To have good ideas, don’t sit in isolation and think big thoughts; get more “parts” on the table.

Liquid Networks
It’s not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. Individuals get smarter because they’re connected to a social network.

The Slow Hunch
Hunches need space and time to evolve.

Serendipity
How to trigger serendipitous thoughts: go for a walk, take a shower or bath, read, get away from work and tasks.

Errors
Errors force us to rethink our biases and contemplate alternatives, spurring innovation.

Exaptation
Great innovators have many hobbies, and ideas from different projects make connections that lead to insights.

The Fourth Quadrant
• “Market-based competition has no monopoly on innovation. Competition and the profit motive do indeed motivate us to turn good ideas into shipping products, but more often than not, the ideas themselves come from somewhere else.”
• From the 1800s on, innovation has increasingly taken place in collaborative groups (“collective invention”), inside and outside the market.
• Why do some good ideas flourish without economic incentives? Non-market environments are more efficient because they’re more open than market environments, which have barriers like copyright, patents, and trade secrets. People can focus on creating new ideas rather than spend time and money protecting old ones.