"Good ideas... want to complete each other as much as they want to compete"

I recommend the book 'Where Good Ideas Come From' by Steven Johnson ( @stevenbjohnson on Twitter) to anyone interesting in the art, science, and history of innovation. He describes the innovation milestones that most books on this subject cover - the printing press, Darwin, the incubator... But more interestingly he breaks down the process of innovation into seven core enablers: understanding the next possible steps by considering the adjacent possible, how networks need to be ‘liquid’ (a gas is too chaotic, a solid too restrictive), cultivating slow hunches, the power of serendipity, why innovation needs errors to progress, exaptation (look it up, it explains a lot about how evolution seems to jump certain chasms), and the importance of the right platform in innovation.

More about the book at http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2010/06/where-good-ideas-come-from.html

You can also watch a 4 minute summary at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU or his 15 minute TED talk at: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html