Chris Spagnuolo's EdgeHopper

I was watching a video of Steven Johnson speaking about where good ideas come from on TED recently.  To say that this talk is jam packed with amazing insight of how collaboration leads to innovative ideas would be an understatement.  Not to spoil your enjoyment of watching this video, but the very last statement of this talk summarizes everything in such a neat little nutshell that it’s worth saying up front: “That is how innovation happens. Chance favors the connected mind”.

So, now that you know the ending, what exactly does it mean.  It means that collaboration, real true and honest collaboration, is where the most innovative ideas come from. What’s interesting is that what Johnson refers to as the “liquid network” in his talk, Randy Nelson of Pixar refers to as “amplification”.  Look at how each describes the environment where good ideas come from:

Johnson’s Liquid Network: “…where you have lots of different ideas that are together, different backgrounds, different interests, jostling with each other, bouncing off each other — that environment is, in fact, the environment that leads to innovation“.

Nelson’s Amplification: Connecting a group of individuals that are interested in each other, that bring separate depth to the problem and that bring a breadth that gives them interest in the entire solution. They find the most articulate way to get a high fidelity notion across to a broad range of people so they can each pull on the right lever.

There are lots of things these two ideas have in common. First, it’s all about a group of individuals building on each others ideas. There is no single “innovator”, no singular mind providing the vision and mission statement to lead a team toward innovation.  Secondly, individuals with different interests and backgrounds (or depth and breadth) work together to build an idea that they couldn’t have built with a group of like minded individuals. I think these two points are the keys to really collaborating and coming up with great ideas, innovative ideas.

I also like that Johnson emphasizes that ideas come from a chaotic place; a place that doesn’t exist in a cubical or a conference room. He says “We take ideas from other people, from people we’ve learned from, from people we run into in the coffee shop, and we stitch them together into new forms, and we create something new…this is the kind of chaotic environment where ideas are likely to come together, where people were likely to have new, interesting, unpredictable collisions — people from different backgrounds.”  Again he touches on the idea of people from different backgrounds coming together, but the most interesting part of the phrase is that unpredictable ideas come from chaotic places.  And the use of the word collisions is brilliant. It’s not about neatly arranging individuals and asking them to “brainstorm” together. It’s about chance meetings, chance conversations that happen spontaneously, resulting in a collision of ideas, and producing an unexpected result.

I’ve been with too many organizations where they have tried to reduce the noise, temper the chaos, create “idea-of-the-month task forces”, and of coarse mitigate all risks.  When you need to fill out a form proving the return on investment for every little thought a team has, when we build cubicles to isolate individuals, when we hire individuals who fit the organizational mold, or when we form teams of thinkers, we severely limit the possibility of collisions that uncover the unpredictable ideas that ultimately lead to true innovation.

So I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that if you want to be innovative, build organizations and build the spaces in your workplace that support both Johnson and Nelson’s ideas about collaboration. Bring together individuals with wildly varying backgrounds and experiences and give them the freedom to roam.  Let minds become connected in an open space.  Allow the chaos to thrive and allow the unpredictable ideas that come out of liquid networks and amplification to permeate your organization’s culture and direction. That’s the place where great ideas come from and that’s where I know I’d rather live.

If you’re interested here is the full TED talk from Steven Johnson:

Related posts:

1. Is There a Process for Innovation?
2. Pixar’s Randy Nelson on Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age
3. Is improv the key to innovative teams?
4. In team we trust
5. Talk About the Passion