Key Takeaways
- The quarter power law that power cities is in fact positive where in most organisms it is innovative. So, the bigger the city the more innovative it becomes. The patterns of innovation are fractal and reliable
- The most innovative environments cultures cities and companies are those that are open ended, those that don’t build walls and silos but those that allow ample connections to spark
- Evolution and innovation is more a process of tinkering with an engineering. It cost to gather already existing building blocks I want done in a productive and unfamiliar Manor it’s called a breakthrough an innovation
- Evolution and innovation is more a process of tinkering with an engineering. It cost to gather already existing building blocks I want done in a productive and unfamiliar Manor it’s called a breakthrough an innovation
- The adjacent possible – many ideas tend to pop up at around the same time and the findings indicate that this is because the building blocks to make them possible have appeared to allow for those connections and ideas to now become possible. The most innovative environments expose their constituents to the adjacent possible and help them make connections between these building blocks in novel and interesting ways
- The trick to having great ideas is not to sit around in isolation and trying to think them up, but rather exposing yourself to as many ideas as possible and putting them together in unique ways
- Ideas are simply a network of connections. Life is carbon based because of its versatility and connecting. That plus an environment which fostered collisions allowed life to emerge
- From buildings to how you spend time, you want to find a flow, a balance between order and chaos – sense, liquid networks that nurture connections and collision. Two incomplete hunches that collide can form a powerful, complete idea
- Slow hunches rather than eureka moments are the rule, not the exception. They can be quite fleeting since they’re not immediate and one way to keep track of them is to write everything down. Don’t impose too much structure as it is the interconnections that really matter
- Innovations are most likely when there is some noise chaos and error. A perfectly stable environment does not typically lead to breakthrough innovations
- Keep space to wander and make connections, avoid silos and read broadly to make connections between fields
What I got out of it
- A really compelling book and I resonated with the idea of a ‘slow hunch’ – keeping questions and ideas marinating in the back of your mind so that as you go about your life, serendipitous connections can more easily be made