Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven Johnson traces the history of innovation to ask what kind of environment allows good ideas to form. He starts with Charles Darwin's first encounter with a coral reef ecosystem and moves through the intellectual output of modern megacities and the rapid rise of YouTube. Johnson describes the slow hunch and the way new ideas grow out of the scaffolding of older ones, a pattern he calls the adjacent possible. He identifies seven principles behind the birth of new ideas and follows them across eras and fields, drawing on material from neurobiology to popular culture. His conclusion is that present-day tools put radical innovation within the grasp of people who know how to nurture it.

It appears on a list of four business books that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh said everyone should read.