A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons—thousands of them—fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness.Steven Johnson
Ideas wants to complete each other as much as they want to competeSteven Johnson
The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.Steven Johnson
Innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts.Steven Johnson
If there is a single maxim that runs through this book's arguments, it is that we are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.Steven Johnson
The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.Steven Johnson
Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do your best work if you do a job that makes you happy.Steven Johnson
The most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop.Steven Johnson
Chance favors the connected mind.Steven Johnson
In other words, we often talk about being right when we should be talking about being wrong.Steven Johnson