Passion Worth Blogging: Where Good Ideas Come From

For a large part of my life coffee shops have been the hangout place of choice for my friends and I. Perhaps, we thought our $4 Starbucks and Blenz blueberry muffins made us sophisticated and adult-like, qualities that our parents refused to acknowledge that we had any. An answer closer to the truth is the atmosphere: the paintings and photographs on the walls of people and places we have never met or visited; the music of jazz, R&B and guitars; the comfy sofas much like the Big Comfy Couch; and the hipsters with their plaid shirts and slip-on shoes. These cozy places was where a single cup of coffee could accompany four hours of conversation that ranged from TV shows to why our French teacher was such a drag to life goals to ways of passing notes in class. Serious stuff, in short.

But why was a coffee shop the place we liked to talk and share our lives? In Steven Johnson‘s TED talk, he explores how innovation is created and comes up with what he calls the liquid network. When people from different backgrounds with different ideas and expertise come together in an environment that allows them to communicate, this encourages innovation because you bounce your ideas off each other, add what each other knows and potentially create something that is the more than the sum of its parts. It is often through discussion that a small idea that you had can become something much more, like discussing what you would like to do today can become an entire Europe trip after graduation, which is what happened to me a few months ago.

What make’s Johnson’s idea so unique is because he targets something that most inventors and founders often say in their autobiographies: their innovative discovery or idea was a eureka moment that happened in an exact instant and blew up into a full-fledged creation. But this is often not true at all, as discussed in the video. Innovation is through collaboration because no one knows everything, much like how Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create Facebook all on his own. He had an idea, perhaps taken by some twins, and had the help others to create the Facebook that it is today.

The moral of the story is that if you have an idea, share it. With the help of others, your idea can become something totally different or become bigger than you could have imagined. And then you’ll write a book and give a TED talk.

(Photo and Video Credit: TED)

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