The Trick To Having Good Ideas Is

This Is How Great Intellectual Breakthroughs Usually Happen In Practice. It Is Rarely The Isolated Genius Having A Eureka Moment Alone In The Lab. Nor Is It Merely A Question Of Building On Precedent, Of Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, In Newton's Famous Phrase. Great Breakthroughs Are Closer To What Happens In A Flood Plain: A Dozen Separate Tributaries Converge, And The Rising Waters Lift The Genius High Enough That He Or She Can See Around The Conceptual Obstructions Of The Age.

Most New Movements Start This Way: Hundreds Or Thousands Of Individuals And Groups, Working In Different Fields And Different Locations, Start Thinking About Change Using A Common Language, Without Necessarily Recognizing Those Shared Values. You Just Start Following Your Own Vector, Propelled Along By People In Your Immediate Vicinity. And Then One Day, You Look Up And Realize That All Those Individual Trajectories Have Turned Into A Wave.

Chance Favors The Connected Mind.

Silicon-based Life May Be Impossible For One Other Reason: Silicon Bonds Readily Dissolve In Water.

Organizations That Empower Folks Further Down The Chain Or Try To Get Rid Of The Big Hierarchal Chains And Allow Decision Making To Happen On A More Local Level End Up Being More Adaptive And Resilient Because There Are More Minds Involved In The Problem.