Allen Lane £20

Where Good Ideas Come From: a Natural History of Innovation, By Steven Johnson

Go for a walk, follow your hunches, note it all down, and you could be the next Archimedes (apparently)

Where do good ideas come from? Well, I don't know about good ideas, but it's pretty obvious where Steven Johnson got the inspiration for his seventh volume of pop technologese – Malcolm Gladwell's third volume of pop economics, Outliers. That book related, with a Sybil Fawlty-like talent for stating the bleeding obvious, how success in everything from musicianship to middle-management is as much the result of good luck as hard graft. Who but a swivel-eyed free-market Tory, one fancied, could demur? In a culture weaned on the fantasy of the self-made man, anybody who was nobody proved keen to cling to Gladwell's not-at-all-contentious comfort blanket.

Where Good Ideas Come From is rather more controversial – though not in any meaningful way. Implicit in the arguments of this "Natural History of Innovation" is the idea that we are all capable of consciousness-changing, world-shattering insights – if only we can be bothered to ensure that our living- and working-spaces are designed to foster Eureka!-style moments.

It is true, of course, that certain environments are inimical to serious thought. Nobody ever had a good idea at a rave, for instance, where having no ideas is rather the point. Einstein, on the other hand, was adamant that it was the very dullness of his day job at the patent office that helped engender the special theory of relativity. Still, I can't see any of the corporate honchos targeted by Johnson's book hiring people who say they'll be bored if they come to work for them. And anyway, we're not all Einstein.

"We have a natural tendency," writes Johnson, "to romanticise breakthrough innovations, imagining momentous ideas transcending their surroundings, a gifted mind somehow seeing over the detritus of old ideas and ossified tradition." Well, yes, we do. Because though ideas may well be "works of bricolage... built out of that detritus", somebody did the building – and it sure as hell wasn't me; nor, in all probability, you. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, says Johnson, though he fails to point out that the taller among us will always see further than the shorter.

Not even Darwin is taller than Johnson, who cuts the great man down to size by adopting the historic present when discussing his work: "Darwin possesses the puzzle pieces but fails to put them together in the right configuration," writes the schoolmasterly Johnson, for all the world as if he were standing over young Charles and seeing just where the poor chap (who "fails to understand that he has the solution at his fingertips") is going wrong. "All of which means," concludes the teacher, that "we cannot say definitively that Darwin hit upon the idea for his theory of natural selection [in just one day] on September 28, 1838." But how small a brain would you need to believe that a theory as big as Darwin's could spring fully formed into even as capacious a bonce as his?

Bluntly, good ideas are the occasional by-product of the work of gifted people. You can follow all Johnson's advice about idea generation – about going for walks and nursing hunches and noting everything down – but without a mind large enough to take in the world on its own terms, you aren't going to come up with anything that changes the terms of the world. Blue-sky thinkers with their helicopter views will doubtless claim that Johnson's suggestions help them push the envelope, but the rest of us can see that his "adjacent possibles" and "liquid networks" are no more than the latest flimflam.

At one point, Johnson tries to convince us that ideas grow out of ideas the way the natural world synergises. Beavers gnaw down trees in which woodpeckers drill holes in which songbirds nest – and in some way, I forget quite how, it's all a bit like Twitter. Well, maybe. Reading this book, though, another analogy from nature kept riding into view. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think.

Independent Comment
blog comments powered by Disqus
Career Services

Day In a Page

In pictures: Royal Stamps of approval

Royal Stamps of approval

Royal Mail's Diamond Jubilee tribute
GB’s Beach Volleyball squad ‘stop traffic’

Beach Volleyball team 'stop traffic'

GB squad promotes TfL's Get Ahead of the Games campaign
Andreas Whittam Smith: Authenticity is a great asset in a leader. David Cameron lacks it

Andreas Whittam Smith

Authenticity is a great asset in a leader. David Cameron lacks it
Back in the thick of it... Alastair Campbell returns to work as a spin doctor

Back in the thick of it... Alastair Campbell returns to work as a spin doctor

Labour's master of media manipulation is back in the PR business
Supermarkets accused of ripping off shoppers with 'misleading' offers

Supermarkets accused of ripping off shoppers with 'misleading' offers

Which? survey reveals that buying single items can often be cheaper than attractive-looking multipack promotions
The art of industrial espionage

The art of industrial espionage

Corporate investigation may lack the glamour of Bond and Bourne, but the two worlds aren't so far removed...
From fashion to film: Jean Paul Gaultier on his week as a Cannes juror

Jean Paul Gaultier: From fashion to film

The fashion designer discusses his week as a Cannes juror
Therapist who tried to 'cure' me of being gay thrown out – but the system is still broken

Therapist who tried to 'cure' me of being gay thrown out...

... but the system is still broken, says Patrick Strudwick
In a Sudanese field, cluster bomb evidence proves just how deadly this war has become

In a Sudanese field, cluster bomb evidence proves just how deadly this war has become

Aris Roussinos speaks to the villagers demanding UN help
'I don't want it to be boring': Former circus producer reveals plans for Diamond Jubilee river parade

Diamond Jubilee river parade

Former circus producer Adrian Evans reveals his plans for the Thames Pageant
VIP treatment: Life is golden in the Olympic fast lane

VIP treatment: Life is golden in the Olympic fast lane

As the rest of us get used to being also-rans in the race for tickets, a chosen few are preparing to enjoy nothing but the very best of London 2012
Forest guards told to shoot poachers on sight after rash of tiger killings

Forest guards told to shoot poachers on sight after rash of tiger killings

India hits back against hunters who sell body parts to Asia for use in traditional medicines
Mining tycoon beats Wal-Mart heiress to title of richest woman

Mining tycoon beats Wal-Mart heiress to title of richest woman

Industrialist Gina Rinehart earns £32m a day from her Australian iron-ore concerns
Language: The cussing room floor

Language: The cussing room floor

Ken Loach is the latest director to complain about censorship. The rules on swearing are so arbitrary, it's no wonder he's effing and blinding
The 10 best car gadgets

The 10 best car gadgets

From a wide-angle HD camera to a satnav that shows you real-time images of the road ahead...