Innovators and entrepreneurs. People who embody creativity, determination, and brilliant ideas. In this blog, I endeavour to explore where brilliant ideas come from and what environments are conducive to yielding ideas. Furthermore, I look as to why there isn’t a societal mold for entrepreneurs that many other business professions have.
When I first thought of having an idea, like most other people, I thought about a single instant. A sudden Eureka moment of clarity. However, in actuality brilliant ideas are a by-product of long incubation periods. As described by Steven Johnson, often “{someone} has a brilliant idea that lingers on in the back of {their} mind for, sometimes, decades. They have a feeling there is an interesting problem, but they don’t quite have the tools yet to discover them”. This long incubation period is consistently overlooked and the idea accredited to an epiphany. An example of this is Darwin, who wrote in his autobiography that his idea for natural selection came to him on an October night whilst he read Malthus and Darwin exclaims “at last I have a theory of which to work”. However, two decades ago Howard Gruber read through Darwin’s copious supply of notebooks and found that Darwin had the full theory of natural selection years before he had his alleged epiphany.
Given that ideas are not conceived in the spur of the moment, what environments are conducive to incubating these thoughts? Steven Johnson looked into this further and found that the majority of ideas were formulated within a “Liquid Environment”, or a place of open idea sharing. The coffee house, a perfect example of a liquid network in 15th century England was the birthplace of numerous ideas as the “the power brokers of their time gathered to sip caffeine-fueled coffee and tea, discuss their challenges, and come up with innovative ways to solve them.”(Kaneshige).
With an understanding of how ideas form and which environments facilitate them, we can observe ideas in the context of innovators and entrepreneurs. It is immediately evident that entrepreneurs do not conform to some societal stereotype about shape, size or personality. Entrepreneurs are a unique breed who battle through adversity to achieve their goals. This adversity can come in many forms, whether it’s: Vladimir Gendelmen who immigrated from the Soviet Union with $500 to his name, or Scott Lee who was forced into the Korean military, or perhaps, Mary-Beth Hyland who was repeatedly raped and violently abused by her father. The point being, the ones who create and make disruptive waves that shake the industry are often the ones who have battled through hardship in their own life. Entrepreneurs and innovators, as we discussed in class, are “fundamental to the business world” (Darryl Kopke).
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References:
https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from#t-458883 (Steven Johnson, TedGlobal)
https://www.lendgenius.com/blog/10-entrepreneurs-inspiring-stories-of-startup-success/
http://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/14/archives/darwin-on-man-a-psychological-study-of-scientific-creativity-by.html (Howard Gruber, New York Times)
