Steven Johnson Quotes

No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.

That’s the key to new and good ideas; they come from having a very broad and multidisciplinary range of interests.

"Where do you get your ideas?" That's the one question I'm genuinely sick of being asked, and also genuinely fascinated by. What fascinates me is not that people ask the question, but what kind of answer are they really looking for? Because if I tell them the truth, which is "I make them up," they seem very disappointed. They want to know about the trek I do once a year to the mountain.

I personally believe that a critical part to innovation is that exchange of ideas so when you say, 'Here's my idea,' someone else at the next table, who is in a different party, will go, 'Oh, these guys are trying that,' so that comes.

An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.

It is important to stop being critical and judging ideas as good or bad because I think if somebody doesn't have a lot of experience you worry their idea is going to be bad, it's not going to be good enough, if not going to be active enough and so you can start to think critically about people's suggestions or what they bring to it but once you get out of that and think whatever they come up with is the right thing right now and so I'm just going to build on it just makes everything so much easier and better.

In teaching, you do not want to COVER things, you want to UNCOVER them. The best way to get good ideas is to have lots of ideas.

Great ideas come from everywhere if you just listen and look for them. You never know who's going to have a great idea.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

You can never discard too many bad ideas.

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint].

In great teams, conflict becomes productive. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own.

The whole business starts with ideas, and we're convinced that ideas come out of an environment of supportive conflict, which is synonymous with appropriate friction.

Ideas come from everywhere - they come from what you see and hear and imagine.

Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas.

There's at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well.

Some of the best inventive moments are born out of 'wrong thinking'. Most people start with the right way so they all follow the same path. The wrong way will lead to mistakes from which you can learn and create new discoveries-the kind of original ideas that come to life when we dare to be different, keep an open mind, and have no fear of failure.

Almost any idea is good if a man has ability and is willing to work hard. The best idea is worthless if the creator is a loafer and ineffective.

Flood your life with ideas from many sources. Creativity needs to be exercised like a muscle. If you don't use it, you'll lose it!

The late Richard Feynman, a superb physicist, said once as we talked about the laser that the way to tell a great idea is that, when people hear it, they say, 'Gee, I could have thought of that.'

If new ideas are the lifeblood of any thriving organisation-and, trust me, they are-managers must learn to revere, not merely tolerate, the people who come up with those ideas.

The last thing we want is a monolithic viewpoint where six people are standing before a president saying the same thing over and over again.

To develop the creative attitude, analyze and focus on the wanted SOLUTION; seek out and fill your mind with the FACTS; write down ideas, both sensible and seemingly wild; let the facts and ideas simmer in your mind; evaluate, recheck, settle on the creative ideas.

You'll never know how close you are to a million-dollar idea unless you're willing to listen.

I'm always busy. You know, the more I do, the more ideas I have—that's the funny thing. The brain is a muscle, and I'm a kind of body builder.