Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

http://www.ted.com People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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  Science & Technology

[Demetrius Sarigiannis]

They can be complimentary. For example in corporate R&D. On one hand, you need to have those regular meetings with colleagues to discuss your results and problems in an open, non-hostile environment. You also need the time to be able to go and read the literature for guidance, run your experiments, collect the data and develop an understanding of what it's telling you. Susan and Steve are not contradicting each other.

[gabbelloto]

After this video, I searched the Doppler effect and found that frequency of the sound can be differed to an observer when the source moves relatively. Ok, maybe it is nothing for lots of people and cannot be considered as an innovation. Hovewer, it was "the eureka moment" for me to understand why the ambulances pass besides me "change" their voices. Maybe a simple proof, or I am a little ignorant to know such basics of physics ;) ...

[madleinfrost]

Thanks for the great videos & channel

[SocraticTaoist]

The world before coffee sounds like a world worth living in!

[sheesh mageesh]

namaste!

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[TheBama325]

people are different in the way they create ideas tho

[Jon S]

This talk offers a really good corrective to Susan Cain's (youtube.com/watch?v=c0KYU2j0T­M4) and vice versa. This talk looks at the importance of idea growth from combined resources, but does touch upon the importance of individual focus and skill. While Johnson draws a parallel between the board room and the 19th C. coffee house, that comparison falls short because the board room has now become a place of jostling personality rather than a place of innovation and so excludes true innovation.