BBC News - The business of innovation: Steven Johnson - 0 views
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The lone genius, beavering away in the seclusion of his lab is how most of us imagine the great moments of innovation have come into being. But is this really the whole story?
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"[Good ideas] come from crowds, they come from networks. You know we have this clichéd idea of the lone genius having the eureka moment.
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"And so much of that is because it's wonderfully set up for other people to build on top of other people's ideas. In many cases without asking for permission.
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"I think there's this abiding belief that markets drive innovation, corporations drive innovation, entrepreneurs driven by financial reward drive innovation, and while that's certainly true in many cases there's also this very rich long history of important world-changing ideas coming out of the more or less intellectual commons of the universities.
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"One of the lessons I've learned is that so many of these great innovators, Darwin is a great example of this, one shared characteristic they all seem to have is a lot of hobbies."
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"Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down; but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies, frequent coffee houses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent."