The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery—these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the groundbreaking ideas that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out applicable approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality. What he finds gives us both an important new understanding of the roots of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.

Johnson–writer, Web guru, and bestselling author of Everything Bad Is Good for You–delivers a sweeping look at innovation spanning nearly the whole of human history. What sparks our great ideas? Johnson breaks down the cultural, biological, and environmental fuel into seven broad “patterns,” each packed with diverse, at times almost disjointed anecdotes that Johnson synthesizes into a recipe for success. A section on “slow hunches” captivates, taking readers from the FBI’s work on 9/11 to Google’s development of Google News. A section on error takes us through a litany of accidental innovations, including the one that eventually led to the invention of the computer. “Being right keeps you in place,” Johnson reminds us. “eing wrong forces us to explore.” It’s eye-opening stuff–although it does require an investment from the reader. But as fans of the author’s previous work know, an investment in Johnson pays off, and those who stick with the author as he meanders through an occasional intellectual digression will come away enlightened and entertained, and with something perhaps even more useful–how to recognize the conditions that could spark their own creativity and innovation. Another mind-opening work from the author of Mind Wide Open.