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Where Good Ideas Come From
Aug. 13th, 2011 03:04 pmHaving finished reading Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson I have to say that his book is a virtuoso accomplishment. By carefully building his thesis about the ways in which innovative thinking interact with supporting social networks he has fundamentally debunked the "lone inventor" hypothesis which underlies a great deal of bad thinking about innovation. That isn't to say that there aren't some lone inventors with important contributions, just that they are relatively few in number their importance to the general process is vastly overestimated.
The key precepts he outlines are:
The upshot of this is that if we wish to create innovative atmospheres we should create environments which expose us to as many ideas as possible. Furthermore we also need to provide enough effort and time to nurse our slow hunches until they can reach fruition. The right environment for innovation is one which creates an open infrastructure so that the kernels of new ideas can build upon that which has gone before at a relatively low cost. We want more things like the Internet, and fewer things like the modern American telecommunication monopolies who own our broadband.
Though Johnson doesn't discuss the modern trend of software patent trolls at great length, one cannot help but reflect upon this practice as being exactly the kind of enforcement of a false scarcity in the idea economy which will stifle innovation. The patent system must be reformed to prevent the artificial enforcement of patents that are incredibly obvious. The vast majority of such trollish lawsuits are in violation of the spirit of the patent system. The spirit of the system is to protect the rights of someone who develops and innovation so that we encourage the further development. In the case of software patent lawsuits we have suits being brought for "submarine patents" which the subject of the litigation was never exposed to in the first place. No idea was stolen because it was so incredibly obvious that it had been independently invented many times over. Personally, I think that no firm that cannot demonstrate an actual honest ongoing attempt to apply a patent idea should have any legal standing to bring suit.
The key precepts he outlines are:
- The most great ideas do not generally develop in one crystallizing Eureka moment.
- The most ideas are developed gradually overtime in the form of slow hunches.
- Such slow hunches are often born from side projects rather than the specific target of a funded research objective.
- The big revelations come in the form of combining multiple slow hunches together.
The upshot of this is that if we wish to create innovative atmospheres we should create environments which expose us to as many ideas as possible. Furthermore we also need to provide enough effort and time to nurse our slow hunches until they can reach fruition. The right environment for innovation is one which creates an open infrastructure so that the kernels of new ideas can build upon that which has gone before at a relatively low cost. We want more things like the Internet, and fewer things like the modern American telecommunication monopolies who own our broadband.
Though Johnson doesn't discuss the modern trend of software patent trolls at great length, one cannot help but reflect upon this practice as being exactly the kind of enforcement of a false scarcity in the idea economy which will stifle innovation. The patent system must be reformed to prevent the artificial enforcement of patents that are incredibly obvious. The vast majority of such trollish lawsuits are in violation of the spirit of the patent system. The spirit of the system is to protect the rights of someone who develops and innovation so that we encourage the further development. In the case of software patent lawsuits we have suits being brought for "submarine patents" which the subject of the litigation was never exposed to in the first place. No idea was stolen because it was so incredibly obvious that it had been independently invented many times over. Personally, I think that no firm that cannot demonstrate an actual honest ongoing attempt to apply a patent idea should have any legal standing to bring suit.
