This is THE BEST BOOK I read in 2010. PERIOD. I am pleased to recognize Steven Johnson’s work, Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation, (Riverhead Books – Published by The Penguin Group New York, NY Copyright © 2010 by Steven Johnson).

In an era when the U.S. requires some creative thinkers to point the way ahead, I urge you and yours to devour this work. This work is timely, a shape-shifter and contains, in my opinion, the type of thinking required for re-evaluating the current foundation, energy and trajectory applicable to individuals, organizations (BOTH public and private sector), entrepreneurs, diplomats, inventors, faith-based communities etc.

What’s the thesis of this work? Listen to 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. Like the free market itself, the case for restricting the flow of innovation has long been buttressed by appeals to the “natural “ order of things. But the truth is, when one looks at innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than more open-ended environments. Good ideas may not want to be free, but they do want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders. They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.” P.22 (emphasis is mine).

The U.S. has always been heralded as the global center for innovation, technological breakthroughs and the quality of a university system that attracts the finest minds from around the world. At present, the U.S. seems to be struggling with a paucity of good ideas and its infrastructure – that has historically produced global admiration (educational achievement, patents, new industries, technologies, strategic partnerships and economic prowess) – has been characterized by a myriad of measures as “in decline.”

This book stirred my patriotic fervor, as well as my competitive and creative juices. It didn’t just stir me up – it somehow rearranged some things for me – at a soul level. It is a uniquely hopeful book – a message of tangible, practical hope for global citizens faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges of survival and daily life.

As Johnson writes, Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives. P.112

Thus, I am NOT going to litter this review with too many excerpts from Johnson’s work that would encourage you to make a judgment that simply reading a review of it was somehow sufficient. Here’s what happened to me after I read Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation — I immediately went out and devoured two of Johnson’s previous, acclaimed works The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map.

From time to time, cultures produce thinkers whose ideas are simply essential, timely and (hopefully) infectious. These people and their ideas seem to rise up at times during certain historical epochs when they are desperately needed — and may be deemed counter intuitive to the mainstream thinking that seems to be widely accepted.

As Johnson says in The Ghost Map: “The river of intellectual progress is not defined purely by the steady flow of good ideas begetting better ones; it follows the topography that has been carved out for it by external factors. Sometimes that topography throws up so many barricades that the river backs up for a while.” P. 135

Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation is a force that pierces the barricades that are currently preventing the natural flow of human ingenuity from proceeding as constructively and as freely as it might. This book is inhabited by the essential inertia that is fundamental to our present and our future – individually and collectively.

I can unequivocally declare this work to be The Best Book I read in 2010.

Bio of Stephen Johnson – (From Amazon Author Page)

Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of six books on the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. His writings have influenced everything from the way political campaigns use the Internet, to cutting-edge ideas in urban planning, to the battle against 21st-century terrorism. His last book is the Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America. He is author of the national bestseller, The Ghost Map: The Story Of London’s Most Terrifying Outbreak — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.

His 2005 work, the national bestseller Everything Bad Is Good For You, was one of the most talked about books of 2005. Steven argues that the popular culture we love to hate – TV, movies, video games – are getting better and are making us (and our children) smarter. In addition to his books, Steven is a contributing editor for Wired magazine and a monthly columnist for Discover magazine. He is a Distinguished Writer In Residence at the New York University Department of Journalism. He lectures widely on technological, scientific, and cultural issues, both to corporate and education institutions.

Steven’s argument in Everything Bad Is Good For You builds on brain research he investigated in his previous bestseller Mind Wide Open: Your Brain And The Neuroscience of Everyday Life. In that book, Steven uses his own personality as the test case for describing how the new brain science is yielding new understandings of human personality. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software was on four prestigious “Best Book of the Year” lists and was named a New York Times Notable Book. It was a finalist for the 2002 Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. Steven’s books have been translated into a dozen different languages.

He was the cofounder and editor-in-chief of FEED, the revolutionary web magazine blending technology, science and culture with a truly innovative interface. Newsweek named him one of the ‘Fifty People Who Matter Most on the Internet.’ In addition to his columns, he’s published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He’s also appeared on many high-profile televisions programs, including The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

“The old ideas don’t work – and they shouldn’t because they are from  the past – and the problems rushing at us are in the present and are coming from the future.” P.41

Warning: You cannot read this book and come away uninspired. This is a truly wonderful read. The impact the book had on me was to continue to write in the margins — ideas that seemed to bubble up as I walked through this journey with Joey Reiman. Need inspiration? Read this book!

The following are some of my favorite excerpts:

“Ideas are what matters most in business, in life, and in society.” P. 12

“We live at a time when creative people can transform cultures in ways that used to be unimaginable.” P.14

I’ve got a bunch of flags on my boat. But there ain’t no white flags.” P.24.

“THE EMPIRES OF THE FUTURE ARE THE EMPIRES OF THE MIND.” — Winston Churchill.

“Lazy marketing creates a monologue with customers while an experience creates a dialogue.” P.60

“The best way to create a high-quality idea is to create a high-quantity of ideas. And the best way to do this is to think. Thinking takes time, so the longest stage of the ideation process is incubation.” P. 64

“If you want to find the answer, ask as many questions as possible.” P.66

ld, we  need to think in a nonlinear fashion because change is nonlinear.” P. 109

“Bastions of procedure create idea anorexia — thoughts that think they are big are really small.” P.110

“Anyone afraid of destroying the old to get to the new never will be able to achieve a worthwhile, breakthrough innovation.” P. 110

“The culture says, “Don’t think outside the square, or you may find yourself outside the company.” This is the kind of culture that rewards stodgy thinking and dull, safe ideas. At the same time, it strangles great thinking.” P.110

“Companies and environments that have a certain way of doing things – that are stuck in a rut of routine thinking – will undo any possibility of having breakthrough ideas.” P. 110

“Big ideas don’t appear, they evolve.” P. 66

“The biggest hurdle the human race faces now is finding a way to create as dynamic and nurturing an environment as possible on a global scale. The scary thing is we need to do it now more than ever before. The encouraging thing is we can do it now more than ever before.” P. 188

“The more we’re idea driven, entrepreneurial, open to opportunity, creating ideas, reinventing ourselves, the more we grow. The more we stifle ideas, sit on our lead, repeat ourselves, depend on a single model, the more we stagnate.” P. 189

“The inescapable truth of the twenty-first century will be that stupidity and stagnation will exact a price we can no longer afford to pay.” p.190

“Imagine children being taught that it’s more important to question than to provide an answer.” P. 191

Joey Reiman lives what he writes. Required reading for creative folks — once a year for life.

Sometimes, language blows my brain up – blows my hair back. I am going to get to an extensive review of this book here in a few days:  Smart World – Breakthrough Creativity and the new Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle – Harvard Business School Press Boston, MA USA Copyright © 2007 by Richard Ogle.

Until I do, blow your hair back with the essence of the following excerpt:

Imagination is not the poor cousin of reason, trafficking in desire-driven fantasy, dreaming, and delusion, but rather, as Fauconnier and Turner show, the very basis on which intelligent, sense-making thought builds. Independently, the philosopher Colin McGinn has reached a similar conclusion in his recent book Mindsight, arguing that without the faculty of imagination, there could be no thought, rational or otherwise. To think intelligently is to create webs of meaning about how the world might be, and this is the work of imagination. Reason follows, creating the rational links and chains of inference that validate and extend our knowledge of reality. Fundamentally we are, as McGinn asserts, Homo imaginans. P. 72

Photography by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved – 2010

“First, everyone should be a heretic. Our times demand it. These are not times for conventional wisdom. New ideas for new times are needed now. All around us imaginative people are rethinking and re-imagining the possibilities of what it means to be human.”

Burke, Spencer and Taylor, Barry A Heretics Guide to Eternity, Copyright © 2006 by Spencer Burke. JOSSEY-BASS Publishers, A Wiley Imprint P. 225

Human beings are the only creatures capable of recognizing the gap between what they are and what they can be expected to be, and of being embarrassed by that gap.

Kushner, Harold S.  How good do we have to be-A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness, Little, Brown and Company Boston, MA  Copyright 1996 by Harold S. Kushner p. 35

“Today, more than ever, we need people with the courage to tell the plain truth. We need brave men and women who refuse to trumpet platitudes, or take stale ideas off the rack. That is why we must cherish those people who have the guts to speak the truth: mavericks, whistle-blowers, disturbers of the public peace.

Hamill, Pete Words Worth Fighting For, Fast Company Magazine, Issue Number 86, September 2004, © 2004 by Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing p.90-91

“If outsiders stop listening, we cannot just turn up the volume.”

P. 84 Kinnaman, David & Lyons, Gabe UNchristian – What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why It Matters Baker Books Grand Rapids, MI Copyright 2007 by Dabvid Kinnaman and Fermi Project.

“We live in an age of heretics: an age where unconventional ideas become conventional wisdom rapidly. And that’s a good thing. Because the future of industrial society depends upon our ability to transcend the destructive management of the past and build a better kind of future. That doesn’t mean embracing every unconventional idea. Nor does it mean flouting authority. A heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom.” Pp. 3-4 And yet corporate heretics may be the closest thing we have, in our self-contradictory time, to a true conscience of large organizations. Many of them have lost their jobs or failed to reach their potential because they would not turn back from the truth they saw. Despite all of these frustrations, it is better to be a heretic than to have one’s soul wither through the denial of a truth. And in the end, the corporations of our time are much, much better because heretics existed.” Pp. 13-14.

The Age of Heretics – The History of Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management: Copyright © 2008 by Art Kleiner – Published by Jossey-Bass: