Where Good Ideas Come From

In Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From: a Natural History of Innovation, he introduces the idea of the “adjacent possible”, which suggest that the source of innovation and good ideas are adjacent to existing concepts.

He also argues that innovation is a gradual and iterative process and not the result of a “eureka” moment, but a slow process of combining and recombining previously existing ideas.

• Democracy was the adjacent possible of the Roman republic and the enlightenment that came before it.
• The World Wide Web was the adjacent possible of the first networked computers used by the military and universities.
• The MP3 player is the adjacent possible of the compact disc player and the flash drive.
• The smartphone is the adjacent possible of the cellular phone, the PDA, and the desktop computer