Where Good Ideas Come From

Why do some environments seem to glow with creativity while others feel sterile? Why do certain cities, companies, or even ecosystems become hotbeds of innovation while others stagnate? In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson explores these questions by tracing a surprising pattern: the architecture of innovation in nature, culture, and technology follows the same recurring shapes. From coral reefs to the Internet, the same principles of connection, openness, and slow development drive discoveries that change the world.

Johnson argues that good ideas rarely appear in isolation or as flashes of genius. Instead, they emerge from networks—of neurons, people, and technologies—that share information, recombine existing elements, and adapt over time. Whether in a city crowded with subcultures, an academic lab brimming with conversations, or a coral reef swarming with species, innovation arises when there’s density, diversity, and flow.

Patterns in Innovation

Across seven key patterns—what he calls the “natural history of innovation”—Johnson distills the hidden order of creative progress. These patterns include the adjacent possible, liquid networks, the slow hunch, serendipity, error, exaptation, and platforms. Each one acts like a biological or social law that favors discoveries. For instance, the adjacent possible describes innovation as opening new rooms connected to what already exists; the slow hunch captures how big ideas need years to ripen before making sense; serendipity shows how chance favors connected minds; and error reminds us that many breakthroughs—like Alexander Fleming’s penicillin—start as mistakes.

As Johnson shows, innovation thrives at the edges: between species in coral reefs, between disciplines in universities, or between technologies on the Web. These “liquid networks” allow information to flow and recombine, making exaptation—borrowing an existing idea for a new purpose—inevitable. Gutenberg’s printing press, for example, repurposed wine-press technology, while Lee de Forest’s vacuum tube, misunderstood even by its creator, birthed the radio, TV, and computer age. Finally, platforms—from coral reefs to cities to digital ecosystems—act as foundations where other innovations flourish.

From Coral Reefs to Cities to the Web

Johnson begins with Darwin on the Keeling Islands, marveling at coral reefs that bloom with abundance in nutrient-poor water—a “Darwin’s Paradox.” The reef, he notes, is an ecosystem that recycles waste so efficiently that it becomes a flourishing “city of life.” Similarly, modern urban centers, as studies from the Santa Fe Institute show, are “superlinear” engines of innovation: as cities double in size, their creativity grows even faster. Both reefs and cities are physical demonstrations of the same rule—diverse, dense connections breed new possibilities.

The Web, Johnson argues, is the digital descendant of these natural systems. It represents humanity’s most dynamic “liquid network,” where slow hunches connect across borders and time zones. Platforms like Twitter or the open-source movement mirror the complex, open architectures of reefs and cities. They are environments where information cascades, barriers are low, and one person’s output becomes another’s building block.

A Different Story of Progress

This framework challenges the traditional “lone genius” narrative. Rather than crediting breakthroughs to isolated moments of brilliance—Newton’s apple or Archimedes’ “Eureka”—Johnson sees them as the culmination of networks in motion. The same rules that govern chemical reactions in the primordial earth also explain how ideas evolve: they require a substrate where molecules (or ideas) can collide, combine, and stabilize. Innovation, then, is less about brilliant minds and more about fertile environments.

Understanding these patterns allows you to intentionally design your own spaces—physical, mental, or social—so that they mimic nature’s most creative systems. In the pages that follow, Johnson reveals not only where innovation comes from but how you can position yourself and your organization at its crossroads. Whether you’re leading a start-up, nurturing a research team, or simply trying to generate new ideas, the key lies in recreating the conditions that nature mastered billions of years ago.

If you’ve ever struggled to make a creative leap, Steven Johnson’s concept of the adjacent possible explains why. It’s the idea that innovation doesn’t arrive fully grown—it expands one logical step at a time from what already exists. Like a house with doors leading to unexplored rooms, every breakthrough opens new doorways to further ones. But you can only move through doors that are next to your current room.

How Innovation Grows

Johnson opens with the story of Stéphane Tarnier, a nineteenth-century French obstetrician who visited the Paris Zoo and saw a chicken incubator. That observation led to his creation of the first infant incubator, an invention that saved millions of newborns. Tarnier didn’t invent from scratch; he explored what was possible with the tools and knowledge of his time.

The adjacent possible also explains Darwin’s theory of evolution: life’s progress is a steady probing of new molecular combinations, each unlocking the next set of possibilities. Johnson draws from biologist Stuart Kauffman, who describes this as a “shadow future” surrounding the present, containing all that could happen next but hasn’t yet. Whether in biology or technology, progress depends on exploring that shadow systematically.

Innovation as Bricolage

Every innovation, Johnson says, is built from spare parts. Ancient inventors didn’t leap straight to new tools—they combined what they already had. Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of parachutes, or the early clockmakers of Nuremberg refining watches, came from tinkering. The NeoNurture incubator, developed in modern times by Design That Matters, embodies this rule: it uses car parts—headlights and dashboard fans—to create a low-cost infant incubator that can be fixed even in remote hospitals. The genius isn’t in invention but recombination.

The Limits of Timing

Another insight from the adjacent possible is that being “ahead of your time” often means being wrong temporarily. Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine—what we’d now call the first computer—was a century too early. Without electricity or electronic circuits, his idea couldn’t function. Like trying to create YouTube in 1995 before broadband existed, Babbage reached beyond his adjacent possible.

For every viable invention, countless promising ones fail because the supporting technologies aren’t in place. That’s why environments that enlarge the adjacent possible—cities, universities, or open online networks—produce so much innovation. They expose you to more combinations, ideas, and tools than you could generate alone.

“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

The lesson for you is clear: creativity relies on tinkering within reach. Whether you’re launching a startup or writing a book, your next breakthrough won’t come from a leap into the impossible but from recombining what’s nearby in new ways.

Imagine you’re brainstorming with friends in a café—the chatter overlaps, ideas collide, and suddenly someone sparks a concept that none of you could have reached alone. That’s a liquid network. According to Johnson, these fluid, high-density environments—wetware in the brain, crowded cities, or the open Web—are the natural incubators of good ideas.

From Neurons to Cities

At every level of life, creativity depends on connections. Our brains contain 100 trillion synaptic links; ecosystems teem with shared energy flows; cities swarm with millions of interactions. Johnson compares “liquid” networks with solids (too rigid for change) and gases (too chaotic for stability). The most creative systems exist at the “edge of chaos”—stable enough to maintain structure, fluid enough to generate new combinations.

In evolutionary terms, carbon and water created the first liquid network, mixing freely so that molecules could combine into life. In human history, the first comparable network emerged with cities. Archaeological records show that innovation exploded once our ancestors clustered together. From Renaissance Florence to modern Silicon Valley, density and diversity turned settlements into creative engines.

The City as a Brain

Research by Geoffrey West (Santa Fe Institute) confirms this metaphor: cities function like giant organisms. As populations double, innovation more than doubles. Each resident becomes a neuron in a larger cognitive network. Jane Jacobs, decades earlier, described the same principle: urban “sidewalk life” makes cities self-renewing. Like coral reefs recycling nutrients, cities recycle ideas.

Designing Liquid Environments

Bringing this pattern closer to home, Johnson highlights Kevin Dunbar’s study of molecular biology labs. He discovered that most breakthroughs didn’t happen under microscopes—but at lab meetings and coffee tables where scientists debated freely. Conversation, not solitude, sparked insight. Similarly, “Building 20” at MIT, a shabby, temporary structure housing random departments, became a legendary incubator for Nobel-worthy ideas because people could knock down walls and improvise collaborations.

Modern companies are learning this lesson. Microsoft’s Building 99, designed with reconfigurable walls and “mixer stations,” echoes that same principle: structure spaces where interactions leak across disciplines. Flow, whether cognitive or social, is fuel for innovation.

A liquid network isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a design principle. The freer ideas flow, the faster they evolve.

If you want to think more creatively, spend time in your own version of the coffeehouse: a place where ideas and disciplines blend. Whether physical or digital, your next breakthrough may depend on finding the right network for collisions.

What if your next great idea is already in your mind, half-formed, waiting patiently to connect with something else? Johnson calls this a slow hunch—an incomplete insight that needs time, collaboration, and the right environment to mature. Contrary to the myth of sudden epiphany, many breakthrough ideas simmer for years before reaching clarity.

From Missed Hunches to History’s Turning Points

The story of the FBI’s Phoenix Memo before 9/11 illustrates what happens when hunches fail to connect. Agent Ken Williams suspected Islamic extremists were learning to fly in U.S. flight schools. A few weeks later, agents in Minnesota detained Zacarias Moussaoui for suspicious flight training. Neither team connected their insights, and disaster followed. As Johnson notes, both hunches were right—but their environment was wrong. The FBI’s closed, hierarchical network suppressed the connection that could have prevented tragedy.

Time and Connection

Unlike flash judgments (which Malcolm Gladwell described in Blink), most transformative ideas evolve over time. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, for instance, was two decades in the making. His notebooks reveal all the essential pieces of his theory years before his declared “Eureka” moment, proving that insight often emerges through accumulating, revisiting, and connecting partial thoughts.

To nurture hunches, you must record and return to them. Darwin maintained exhaustive notebooks—a practice dating back to the Enlightenment’s “commonplace books,” where thinkers copied quotes, made observations, and connected fragments over time. Ideas written down have a second life; they wait for the right partner thought to arrive.

Modern Hunch Builders

In the digital era, platforms like Google’s Innovation Time Off replicate this process. Engineers pursue side projects once a week, letting half-baked ideas germinate. That’s how Gmail and AdSense emerged—from slow hunches nurtured by free time and open connections. Similarly, Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web came from combining years-old fragments: an early note-taking software (“Enquire”) and CERN’s hypertext system.

Darwin’s, Berners-Lee’s, and Google’s breakthroughs share a pattern: a hunch, sustained over time, that eventually collides with the right companion idea.

In your own life, collect your half-baked ideas. Whether in a notebook, digital app, or shared database, let them mingle and mature. A slow hunch today could become tomorrow’s revolution—if you give it time to breathe.

Sometimes the best ideas find you when you’re not looking for them. That’s the essence of serendipity—the meeting of chance and a prepared mind. Steven Johnson shows that while luck plays a role, environments rich in connections, noise, and diversity are what turn random collisions into meaningful discoveries.

Dreams, Noise, and Discovery

Johnson recounts famous cases where ideas emerged from the subconscious. In 1921, Otto Loewi dreamed of an experiment involving frog hearts that proved nerve signals were chemical, not electrical—a discovery that later won the Nobel Prize. Friedrich August Kekulé dreamed of a snake biting its tail, revealing the ring shape of the benzene molecule. These breakthroughs weren’t pure luck; they came from minds steeped in questions, primed to connect random images with deep knowledge.

Neuroscience now confirms this. The brain’s “chaos mode” during sleep and daydreaming allows distant neurons to fire together, forming new associations. As psychologist Ullrich Wagner found, people who “sleep on a problem” are twice as likely to find hidden patterns—because dreams explore the brain’s adjacent possible.

Creating the Conditions for Luck

Cultures can cultivate serendipity just as individuals can. The eighteenth-century coffeehouse was a physical engine for accidental collisions, bringing scientists, writers, and merchants into the same space. In our time, the Internet—with its hypertext links and open discussions—has become a global coffeehouse. Each click can take you to an idea you never expected, yet desperately needed.

Digital Serendipity

Contrary to critics who claim digital filters kill serendipity, Johnson argues that the Web enhances it. Tools like search engines, RSS feeds, and Wikipedia expose users to hundreds of adjacent ideas daily. Serendipity thrives when ideas are visible and searchable. His personal archive in a program called DEVONthink, for example, uses algorithms to surface semantic connections he didn’t know existed. Once, a search about Victorian sewage led him to an article on bone formation, inspiring a new metaphor for waste recycling.

You can’t plan for serendipity, but you can build a world where meaningful accidents are inevitable.

The takeaway: embrace environments that mix structure and noise. Go for walks, read widely, follow links that surprise you. Serendipity emerges when your mental reef is open for new species of thought.

Few people celebrate being wrong, but Johnson insists that error is essential to innovation. Failure, noise, and mistakes push thinking into unexplored territory. Being wrong forces you to challenge assumptions, leading to discoveries impossible through careful planning alone.

The Creative Power of Mistakes

One of Johnson’s most striking stories is that of Lee de Forest, inventor of the Audion tube, a precursor to modern electronics. De Forest misinterpreted how his own device worked; yet his “flawed” invention became the foundation for radios, televisions, and computers. Similarly, Wilson Greatbatch accidentally inserted the wrong resistor into a circuit and created the first cardiac pacemaker.

These innovators, Johnson says, stumbled forward not despite their errors but because of them. They were already nurturing hunches that guided their curiosity when mistakes revealed new directions. The key is not to eliminate error but to notice it, test it, and reframe it as information.

Noise as Creativity’s Catalyst

Research by psychologist Charlan Nemeth shows that dissent and even incorrect information increase creativity in groups. In experiments, teams exposed to “false” input made more original associations than those given perfect data. Similarly, in science, anomalies often lead to paradigm shifts—as when cosmic background radiation, once dismissed as static, proved evidence of the Big Bang.

At the biological level, evolution itself depends on “useful mistakes.” Random DNA mutations create new possibilities for life. Without genetic error, diversity and adaptation would cease. Nature doesn’t fear failure—it optimizes for a little of it.

“Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore.” —Steven Johnson

For innovators, the lesson is to build systems tolerant of noise. Prototype, experiment, and revise quickly—what start-ups call “fail faster.” Mistakes are not roadblocks but stepping stones in the adjacent possible. They are the half-truths evolution needs to stay alive.

Exaptation is Johnson’s term for creative repurposing—when an idea, process, or trait developed for one use finds another. It’s the art of borrowing. Evolution, technology, and art all advance through these happy accidents of reuse.

From Feathers to Printing Presses

In biology, Stephen Jay Gould coined “exaptation” to describe features that evolved for one function but proved useful for another. Feathers, originally for insulation, became tools for flight. In technology, Johannes Gutenberg did the same when he transformed the wine press into a printing press. By recombining existing tools, he launched Europe’s information revolution.

History is full of such migrations: Charles Babbage’s punch cards borrowed from silk weaving looms, and vacuum tubes designed for radio waves later powered early computers. As Johnson notes, creativity isn’t always about invention—it’s about recognizing hidden potentials in the familiar.

Cultures That Encourage Borrowing

Cities are perfect exaptation machines. Sociologist Claude Fischer found that large cities spawn subcultures—artists, radicals, and entrepreneurs—whose practices later cross-pollinate. Jane Jacobs observed the same of New York neighborhoods: “new ideas must use old buildings.” Diverse networks allow old tools to find new lives.

The arts demonstrate this vividly. James Joyce exapted a minor narrative device, “stream of consciousness,” to redefine modern literature in Ulysses. Brian Eno, inspired by American radio sermons, sampled voices to create the 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, influencing decades of popular music. Each borrowed fragment was a step into the adjacent possible.

For innovators, exaptation means looking sideways, not forward. The strange hobby, forgotten experiment, or outdated technology may be waiting to serve an unexpected purpose. The next revolution often lives inside yesterday’s tools.

Platforms are the fertile foundations where other inventions grow. Johnson shows how nature, cities, and human technology all create layers that invite others to build on top of them. They are the coral reefs and city streets of innovation—a shared stage for collaboration and reuse.

Nature’s Platforms

Darwin’s coral reefs exemplify platform building. The coral polyps construct structures that become habitats for countless species, turning scarcity into abundance. Ecologist Clive Jones calls organisms like coral or beavers “ecosystem engineers” because their creations—reefs, dams, or forests—allow thousands of other species to thrive. Each platform becomes an environment for even more innovation.

Platforms in Technology and Society

The same pattern defines human creativity. The Global Positioning System (GPS), born from Cold War military research, later underpinned the mapping apps, ride-sharing services, and logistics that shape our daily lives. Similarly, the Internet’s open architecture—built on shared protocols like HTTP and TCP/IP—became the ultimate platform for new layers: the World Wide Web, social media, and today’s app economy.

Platforms thrive when they’re open. Twitter’s early developers, for example, released its API before its app, inviting outsiders to create tools like hashtags and retweets. Governments, too, are learning this lesson—Washington, D.C.'s “Apps for Democracy” challenge used public data to crowdsource civic innovation. Openness, not control, is the mindset of generative ecosystems.

Recycling and Stacked Layers

Platforms also recycle. Old buildings house new businesses; abandoned subway cars become artificial reefs; environmental start-ups like Calera turn industrial CO₂ into building materials. Online, stacked layers amplify this effect: YouTube depends on Flash, Twitter on GPS and mobile networks, the Web on the Internet—all open platforms built atop one another.

“You’re not just standing on the shoulders of giants—you’re standing on the platforms they built.”

In your work, think like a platform builder: create systems that others can extend. When you share your tools freely, you unleash countless new possibilities. As Johnson writes, true innovation doesn't just produce new ideas—it makes it easier for others to have them.

In his conclusion, Johnson zooms out to compare centuries of innovation, categorizing them into four quadrants: individual versus networked, and market versus non-market. He reveals that the most transformative ideas—like the Internet, science, and open-source software—emerged from the fourth quadrant: networked and non-market systems.

A Long View of Innovation

Using data from hundreds of breakthroughs since 1400, Johnson finds that while lone inventors like Gutenberg or Carrier fit the myth of the entrepreneurial genius, they’re exceptions. Most progress arose from collaborative, open environments—coffeehouses, academic networks, and shared laboratories. Over time, innovation shifted from solitary tinkerers to connected collectives.

This fourth quadrant includes Darwin’s naturalists, university research communities, and open platforms like Wikipedia. These ecosystems thrive not on financial incentives but on shared curiosity and freedom to build on others’ work. As open information circulates, discoveries multiply—mirroring coral reefs rather than factories.

Rethinking Markets and Competition

Johnson doesn’t reject capitalism; he reframes it. Market competition fuels innovation up to a point, but secrecy and patents often slow progress. The Internet and the Web—both born from government and academic collaboration—became commercial powerhouses precisely because they started open. Like Thomas Jefferson wrote, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine.” Ideas spread like fire and air: expansive and uncontainable.

For modern institutions, this means embracing openness within and beyond corporate walls. Universities, public agencies, and even businesses can act as facilitative platforms when they share data freely and encourage connected experimentation. Innovation grows fastest not in silos but in gardens.

The Reef as a Model for Society

Johnson ends where he began: with the coral reef. Markets, like nature, are not just wars of survival but webs of cooperation. Innovation, he argues, is less like Darwin’s “war of nature” and more like his “tangled bank,” where organisms coexist and exchange. The future belongs to those who build connected systems—be they technological, civic, or ecological—that allow ideas to flow freely.

For you, this is an invitation: look for the reefs in your world. Build networks that thrive on openness, not control. Support the fourth quadrant wherever it appears—because that’s where the next century’s good ideas will come from.