A little history
British men and women drank alcohol almost exclusively until as late as 1650 when coffee became popular. With coffee came the coffee house and with the coffee house came a whole slew of new ideas. Innovative thinking about politics, philosophy and business began to pop up everywhere.
Coffee houses mirror in general purpose the pubs that had serviced Britain for hundreds of years. People gathered. They joked. They discussed. When the transition from a depressant to stimulant came along, however, all that jabbering actually become productive.
Worth a watch.
Eureka!
History is littered with stories of eureka moments. Newton and the gravity apple. Darwin recognizes evolution in a flash. The moment of realization, or clarity, or inspiration is precious and fleeting. It needs to be captured in an instant or else be lost forever, right?
Wrong. As it turns out, few innovators really even experience the light bulb blinking on. In reality, almost all of the major hunches happen slowly, as data becomes evident. As theories get tested and rejected. Truly special notions don’t get capped with a cry of “eureka!”
Where do ideas come from?
Ideas, Johnson elaborates, come from networks. They are formed over time by the exchange of thoughts and guesses and doubts. At the smallest level, an idea is a connection. At the micro level, ideas “happen” when a neuron plugs into another for the first time. On the macro, they happen in just the same way.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection didn’t come to him in an exciting epiphany. He developed it in his notebooks for months before it ever “clicked.” The exchange of ideas with others (and even with himself) kept things stirring in his mind. It churned and churned until evolution popped out.
Another example of gradual innovation comes with the creation of global positioning systems (GPS). When the Russians shot a satellite into space, a pair of dorky geniuses decided to listen to its blips and beeps. Then someone asked if the sound could betray distance. It could. Another postulated that knowing the distance could determine location.
What do you know? That worked too. Eventually, a curious boss came by and wondered aloud “could you use this process to track my nuke-carrying submarine from space?” You bet they could. Then, years later, Reagan shared the technology with the world and a creative innovator who probably got lost a lot decided that this trick could be used to track down a coffee.
The journey from blips to lattes was a long one, full of questions and ideas along the way. GPS only exists now because thoughts were shared, questions asked, and connections made. Ideas don’t strike like lightning, they are fanned like a flame.