Review

The majority of innovation comes from brilliant individuals and eureka moments (except it doesn’t). Clearly there’s more to innovation - and it’s a more empowering mindset and it’s good news we can be more systematic at creating innovation in society and institutions.

I loved this book, and it’s strengthened my belief in second brains!

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Good Strategy / Bad Strategy

I keep coming back to the core concepts of this book. Before reading it I thought the concept of strategy seemed vague - I appreciate the clarity and structure the author brings to the subject. The examples bring the concepts to life. Personally I feel like I'm more able to assess the quality of a strategy now.

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The Art of Action

Pair with 'Good Strategy / Bad Strategy' to get a great foundational understanding of what makes good strategy. The author argues that the world's military powers have been refining how to turn strategy into action for millennia - and we'd be silly to ignore what they've learnt.

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The Practice · Shipping Creative Work

If you're creative and struggling to get stuff done this is book is the one. It's a reminder that you don't have to wait for inspiration, you're not beholden to that magical force, you have control.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• Darwin’s Paradox: Coral Reefs 0.01% of marine area, but 25% of diversity
• As cities get bigger, they generate more ideas per capita. The average person in a city of 5 million is 3x more creative than those in one of 100k
• The 10x10 rule
• Innovation: It takes 10 years to build build the platform
• Adoption: It takes 10 years to get mass adoption (colour TV, HD TV)
• But YouTube took just 2 years (1x1)
• Many patterns that appear in nature appear in business:
• Competition - Overstated impact, because it seems more prevalent at the individual and organisational level than it does at the other ones
• Openness and connectivity are actually more important to the overall development of innovation
• Innovation happens at many levels, we overemphasise the ones that we see:
• Global Evolution, Eco systems, Species, Brains, Cells
• Ideas, Workspaces, Organisations, Settlements, Information networks
• Generative environments often have innovation going on at different levels.
• To increase innovation we’d be better served by connecting ideas than protecting them
• The Adjacent Possible
• Evolution is a tinkerer not an engineer.
• The gradual and relentless pursuit of the adjacent possible.
• Good ideas don’t come from thin air, they are built out of a collection of existing parts, some are ways of solving problems, some are mechanical parts or technologies.
• Oxygen was discovered shortly after we had the ability to measure it
• Are Inventions are inevitable? Was a study of inventions that happen in 2 places at once, its almost indistinguishable from the list of most important inventions
• The adjacent possible is much about limits as it is about openings. The history of cultural progress is almost always in small steps, somebody opening one door that leads to another door.
• It’s rare for somebody to come up with an idea that enables us to skip a few rooms, they are called ‘ahead of their time’
• Babbage ideas on computing were so ahead of his time they escaped the adjacent possible, and weren’t realised.
• YouTube would not have worked 5 or 10 years earlier
• To innovate, explore the edges of the adjacent possible that exist around you. What kind of environments are good for innovation... those that expose a wide variety of parts and show the adjacent possible, and encourage novel ways of combining those
• Innovation is all about having spare parts that can be combined in new combinations. The key to innovation is not about having big thoughts, but to get more parts on the table. Like the Apollo 13 Solution
• Liquid Networks
• A good idea is better described a network (than a spark). A network of cells that are exploring the adjacent possible connections you can make in your mind.
• To make your brain more conducive to making new connections, what environment do you put it in?
• What drove life and innovation on planet earth?
1. a capacity to make as many new connections as possible
2. An environment that makes random connections possible and probable
• Innovative systems gravitate towards the edge of chaos.
• A gas is chaotic and ephemeral
• A solid is stable and boring
• A liquid makes new connections possible through adjacent connections
• Agriculture made it possible to have cities, connections and collaboration. Information spill over. As soon as we had cities and writing, we became radically more innovative
• Large collectives are rarely capable of innovation. There’s no wisdom of the crowd, its the wisdom of someone in the crowd. Individuals get smarter because they are connected to the network
• A study of innovation showed the important ideas occurred in regular lab meetings. The group environment helped reconceptualise problems, questions from colleagues challenge assumptions and think about things at a new scale, or in a new way
• The Slow Hunch
• Most great ideas come into the world half baked, in a partial incomplete form, they lack a missing element, that missing element might be in somebody else’s head. If they don’t connect, they fail
• 911 was somewhat predicted by 2 different hunches. One about an individual who showed little interest in landing a 747 or getting a job as a pilot, and another that spotted a larger pattern of people of interest going to flying school. If they were put together, we could have solved something
• Most ideas are people searching for a solution to a problem over a long period of time. Sometimes for decades.
• Slow hunches are easily lost, so they need to be nurtured and cultivated.
• Darwin’s natural selection - he described as a moment of inspiration. Although when you examine all of his notebooks, all the building blocks were there. Variation, competition, changes over time..
• Write everything down! The notebook platform provides a space for ideas to cultivate. Darwin was constantly re-reading his notes, almost a duet between his past self and present self.
• Building a second brain was called common placing (100’s of years ago) 1652. Bells common place book. Darwin inherited a common place book.
• Re-reading and re-writing your common place book. You want to be able to find things, but also have freedom to have random thoughts. Too much order can stop new ideas emerging.
• Serendipity
• A hunch has to connect with other ideas. The more disorganised your brain is, the smarter you are (the opposite of executing a habit).
• Serendipity is when you discover a missing bit of the puzzle. You need something to hang the ideas off of.
• How do you create environments that foster serendipity:
• Seems like a contradiction to try and create serendipity
• Go for a walk, long showers, bath tubs.
• There does seem to a pattern, about thinking deeply, then letting go. When letting go, new connections arise and new ideas occurs
• To cross pollinate ideas, try reading lots of books in a short amount of time. Bill Gates and others have reading holidays. By compressing it into a few days, you give new ideas a chance to network
• Having a second brain can help serendipity. Newspapers are serendipity machines.
• Filters reduce serendipity (not native to the web). The information diversity on the web, there’s always something interesting to come across, but there’s almost too much, thats why we have filters.
• Restrictions on the spread of new ideas (patents) make things worse. Closed environments inhibit serendipity. Secrecy comes with great cost, turn your R&D labs inside out.
• Brainstorming - generative ideas. (Its finite in time and space, you need something asynchronous to increase the chance of serendipity)
• Build information management systems, that allow ideas to persist, disperse and recombine. Create an environment where brainstorming is constantly running in the background, a collective version of the 20% time. Create a database of collective hunches. A suggestion box. Hunches about new ideas, visible to everyone, people can come and build on them. Vote on colleagues suggestions. Idea exchange. Individual and collective. Make them public, give good ideas new ways to connect.
• Error
• Steady consistent accumulation of error leads to invention
• The pacemaker came from the novel combination of spare parts (used the wrong resistor and it sounded like a heart beat). He'd been thinking about irregular heart beats as a signal transition problem for 5 years prior to that though
• Slow burn of a problem (always working on a problem)
• The errors of a great mind, exceed in number those of a less vigorous one
• Probe at the edges of error, being right keeps you in place, being wrong forces you to explore
• Transform error into insight. Conceptualise scenarios where the error might actually be meaningful
• Subtle mutations in the genetic code is a better recipe for innovation than complete random code generation (most would die after birth)
• Evolution didn't close the door on mutation, 1 in 30m base pairs, 150 mutations per person
• You want to be able to pass on mutation, without passing on genes that make mutation too common, as further mutations will crowd out the successful ones. So you need some stability to allow for evolution
• Weak tie Exaptation
• Exaptation: the process by which features acquire functions for which they were not originally adapted or selected.
• Biology term: Exaptation is when a trait gets optimised for a certain use, but gets highjacked for a different function
• Bird feathers initially evolved for temperature regulation. Later helped them fly.
• Gutenberg used the wine screw press (an idea that survived the dark ages) to invent the printing press.
• Component parts of the printing press had already been invented. The genius, was borrowing a mature technology from a different field, putting it to work to solve an unrelated problem
• Mutation, error and serendipity.
• Weak ties are more important than strong ties. You have an idea in one space, you can bring it over to another space. Transfers fast, chance for exaptation.
• Many of the great inventors had different fields of interest and many hobbies. Overlap can help you solve problems from new angles.
• Chance favours the connected mind.
• Platfroms
• Darwin had to think at different scales of time to solve that problem.
• Youtube was built on ... javascript, the web and adobe flash for video playback
• Today 3 people could build youtube in 6 months thanks to the power of platforms
• You can build using a lot of the software platforms without asking permission. When you can build without asking permission innovation thrives.
• Make people think differently, by combining and colliding thoughts
• Platforms can reduce the cost of innovation
• Linking allows information to flow and be recycled
• Networked Non-Market environments are great for innovation. Universities are the best model for this we have. Ideas are shared freely but there’s variety and connections
• So, how do you come up with good ideas?
• Go for a walk
• Cultivate hunches
• Write everything down
• Keep your folders messy
• Embrase serendipity
• Make generative mistakes
• Take on multiple hobbies
• Frequent coffee houses and other liquid networks
• Follow the links
• Let others build on your ideas
• Borrow, recycle and reinvent
• Build a tangled bank?

Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.