Though not related explicitly to schooling, Johnson’s book will make for interesting reading for teachers keen to help their pupils develop new attitudes towards learning.
Where good ideas come from? The natural history of innovation
Synopsis
In asking where do good ideas come from, Johnson identifies what it is that makes an environment conducive to innovation. The most important ideas take time to develop and incubate and good ideas normally come from the collision of several hunches: so he argues we must create system that allows hunches to come together.
Tracing the history of innovation, Johnson places the innovators of each breakthrough into four groups: the classic solo entrepreneur, protecting innovations in order to benefit from them financially; the amateur individual, exploring and inventing for the love of it; the private corporations collaborating on ideas while simultaneously competing with one another; and the space of collaborative, non-proprietary innovation, exemplified in recent years by the Internet and World Wide Web, two ground breaking innovations not owned by anyone.
Good ideas, he writes, thrive in environments that encourage learning and collaboration and when learning is encouraged, errors can lead to innovation. It is that sort of environment schools must foster in order to encourage innovative thinking in their pupils.