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Where good ideas come from

Steven Johnson argues that good ideas grow in fertile environments, where partial thoughts connect and recombine over time, rather than arriving as eureka moments. A slow hunch can linger for years before something finally completes it. The adjacent possible is what widens as we go: open one door, by reading or by meeting colleagues, and new doors appear that we could not have reached from where we started. A first idea begins that process rather than ending it.

Also covered: generating research ideas · student timeline · literature search dead ends