Keynote – Steven Berlin Johnson
For those who don’t know who Steven Johnson is, here is a snippet of his bio from Leigh Bureau, the company that organizes speakers:

“Best-selling author of seven books on the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. Social critic and technologist, with a fine track record for seeing emerging trends and explaining why they’re relevant to both personal life and business. Creator of three influential  websites. Author, Where Good Ideas Come From, The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map. Founder/Creator, hyperlocal media site outside.in, acquired by AOL in 2011.” The rest of his bio can be read here.

Everyone that attended received a free copy of his latest book, “Where good Ideas Come From – The Natural history of Innovation”
~As an aside, the book so far is really pretty interesting. I may post on this once I’ve finished. So far, I’d definitely recommend.
The theme of Stevens book and speech are basically this:

The notion of ‘Eureka!’ moments is a myth. “Most” good ideas come as the result of circumstances that are much more complex than just “A Ha!”

Johnson used several historical innovations to illustrate the point that most ‘Good Ideas’ have at least one of seven key principles that lead to its coming to be. While Steven hit on several of the principles he identifies in his book, he didn’t cover them all during the keynote. Here are the ones that were covered and a brief explanation of what it is and how it can impact the birth of a good idea.

The Slow Hunch
Ideas are usually evolved over time.

John Snow is recognized as the father of epidemiology. As the story goes, Dr. John Snow was plotting cases of cholera on a map. Snow noticed that there was an unusually large cluster of cholera cases in SoHo near Broad Street. Dr. Snow quickly realized that the people that lived in this area all shared the same water supply and surmised that the cholera was spreading from there. He promptly presented his findings to the minister of health and had the pump handle removed and cholera was eradicated from England.
As it turns out though, there was nothing quick or prompt about the process. The first cholera outbreak occurred in England in 1831 and John Snow had been theorizing as early as 1849 that cholera was transmitted through water supplies (The Slow Hunch). Additionally, even after the Broad Street incident neither England’s minister of health, nor the scientific community at large seemed to actually believe Snow or his evidence.

Exaptation
An evolution or advance in one area has am impact in an unrelated area.

Johnson gave a simple and straightforward example of Exaptation with Johannes Gutenberg and how his printing press was specifically created only after seeing a wine press in action.

Liquid Networks
Creating & maintaining relationships with diverse professional backgrounds helps foster innovation.

Working, communicating or collaborating with individuals from other professions helps to understand related problems and alternative solutions.

The Adjacent Possible
There are only a finite number of possible options at any given time.

Basically, when & where an innovation occurs has as much to do with the innovation as does the individual(s) responsible for it. The example that Steven used here was of the NeoNurture Incubator project. Incubators and their benefits are things that most of the civilized world take for granted. When the thought of bringing incubators to underdeveloped parts of the world was discussed, one of they key issues aside from the upfront cost, would be the ability to maintain the incubators if something was to break. So the group looked at what other machines were in use in most of the rural areas that are able to be fixed. The answer was cars. Most of the rural world has cars and distribution chains in place to provide parts to these places.

The ‘Adjacent Possible’ for an incubator to exist and be sustainable in underdeveloped rural area of the world was to make an incubator out of car parts. More information on the NeoNurture Incubator can be found here:
http://designthatmatters.org/portfolio/projects/incubator/

The complete list of the seven principles:

  • The Slow Hunch
  • Exaptation
  • Liquid Networks
  • The Adjacent Possible
  • Serendipity
  • Error
  • Platforms

 

For those that missed Steven’s Keynote, a shorter version of his talk from TED can be played below:

A nice whiteboard video illustrating all the concepts discussed above