TED | Steven Johnson : Where do good ideas come from?

 Knowing that we had to do a video review this week, I already know I'm down for it!
Personally, I have always enjoyed TED videos and this was definitely a good one again for me.I went ahead watching the talk by Steven Johnson on video, basically giving historical recounts about idea sharing, how 'an idea is a network'.Given examples way back when some of us weren't even born yet. He started by showing a picture of a coffeehouse built in 1650 in Oxford named Grand Café. It was never about the spread of its coffee or the British culture but rather he emphasised on the coffeehouses architecture that was crucial to development and its space. To him, it meant more than that.  To him, it is not just some place where people chat over coffee. It was a space where people get together with different background, different fields of expertise and share. 

As he quoted, "where ideas could have sex." 
Many would start questioning hm, now, what did he meant by this?
The concept is similar.
 What these spaces hold for people was that its like a conjugal bed -- where ideas can get together.

For the longest time, he wondered where in the world good ideas come from. What is the kind of environmental -- what is the space for/of creativity? Like the coffeehouse, he went onto this quest looking at media environment, even to biological environments like coral reefs and rainforests, just to find a shared pattern within these spaces showing recurring behaviours that we can learn from and apply to our own lives/organisations/environments to make it more creative and innovative. No one can disagree that some metaphors steer us towards a certain concept of 'idea-creation' that have those "eureka!" moments, those lightbulb moments. But Steven preferred to think otherwise, that ideas and people are not only the kind that are notoriously unreliable and self-report. 

But rather, people and ideas are a network. 

We as artists especially,take ideas from others, others that we are inspired by, others that we happen to run into in coffeehouses and what not..and sum  these little random hunches up together into new forms and amazingly create something new. Looking at one idea more than it can be shown as how it is. A distinct example Steven gave was about the launch of Sputnik and how it affected the birth of GPS today. To add, this was all stitched up with unplanned emergents and hunches made by a bunch of curious colleagues that developed a side passion for. Gosh.. to analyse it all everything was technically unintentional! For that, it led to new directions that no creator would expect if it was build right and of course, in good space. We have to start filling good chaos in the workspace and not constrain ourselves with what we think we can only do than not.