Customer Reviews

Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity And the New Science of Ideas

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Although we recognize and appreciate the importance of the human mind's capability for breakthrough creativity (e.g. DNA, printing with movable type, the personal computer), Richard Ogle acknowledges, "the mental processes that led to them have remained largely beyond our grasp. Where do truly innovative ideas come from, and how does the mind make the leap to embrace them? What role do existing cultural and social factors play? Above all, what are the primary mental faculties involved in creativity, and how do they work?" These are among the questions to which Ogle responds in this volume. His objective is to provide "a theoretical and practical account of achievements that before were generally regarded as the unfathomable products of genius." He succeeds brilliantly by forging "a deep connection between the discoveries concerning discontinuity made in the emerging science of networks, the imaginative processes underlying creative leaps, and the law-governed dynamics of a networked model of idea--spaces in the extended mind."

Ogle has identified nine laws of network science, any one or combination thereof that can explain creative breakthroughs. For example, "The Law of Tipping Points": Under certain critical conditions, order arises out of disorder. Malcolm Gladwell devotes an entire book, The Tipping Point, to examining how relatively insignificant factors can have profound impact. In scientific terms, this is the concept of "phased transitions" or, as Thomas Kuhn describes them in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, "paradigm shifts." Ogle offers several examples that illustrate how tipping points within the process of phased transitions "violate what scientists used to think of as a fundamental principle of physical systems: that there is a direct, quantifiable relationship between cause and effect."

After I read this passage in Ogle's book (pages 79-95), I set the book down, located my copy of Jacob Bronowski's The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination and reviewed the passages I had highlighted. Although there are no references to Bronowski in Ogle's book, I think this brief excerpt from it helps us to increase our understanding of how we see and make sense of the world is "deeply shaped by the framing that, consciously or not, we unavoidably bring to bear." Bronowski asserts that "even the perception of the senses is governed by mechanisms which make our knowledge of the outside world highly inferential. We do not receive impressions that are elemental. Our sense impressions are themselves constructed by the nervous system in such a way that they automatically carry with them an interpretation of what they see or hear or feel."

Recall Ogle's observation noted previous that "the mental processes that led to [various creative breakthroughs] have remained largely beyond our grasp." However, there have been some recent developments ("profoundly important advances") that have increased our understanding of those processes. One is the emerging science of networks. It suggests that pattern formation is not random. "Its newly discovered laws have led to two highly significant insights regarding creativity. First, the networks of the extended mind, like all dynamic networks, are self-organizing; they drive their own transformation, thereby enabling the intelligence embedded in the idea-spaces of our smart world to provide a vast and potent external source of creative energy and ideas. Second, the, the human mind's imaginative faculties not only actively piggyback on these dynamics, deriving much of their creative power from them, but turn out to be themselves driven by universal network laws." In other words, the space of ideas "thinks" for each of us.

This is by no means an "easy read." Many will need to re-read it (as did I) to absorb and digest Ogle's rigorous examination of what is indeed "the new science of ideas." He offers several specific strategies that enable his readers to conduct their own examination of that science. When concluding his book, he offers this encouragement: "trust your imaginative faculties as they surf embedded webs of intelligence near and far, and have the confidence that if you're up for the ride, the space of ideas, shaped by the laws of network dynamics, will do most of the hard thinking for you."

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the aforementioned books by Kuhn and Bronowski as well as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, Andy Clark's Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, Albert Borgmann's Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, Gerald M. Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind and his more recently published Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge, and The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization co-authored by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman.

I found this book interesting in its descriptions of how innovations such as the PC, the printing press and Barbie(!) came about - it was fascinating to see how these things evolved and the confluence of ideas, influences and accidents which led to them.

However, I found the author's central thesis to be confused and (as a research mathematician myself in graph theory), I felt that he did not really understand the mathematics upon which he relies so heavily. He did not seem to understand that 'idea spaces' are not 'real', that they do not interact autonomously, but only through the mediation of a human mind. It is human minds that are exposed to unique sets of ideas and connect them together. While the ideas may be out there in human artefacts such as books, websites, machines, artworks etc, it takes a human mind to put them together. If you read his case studies without his theory, it becomes very clear that this is in fact the case. Lock a whole lot of books in a room and see how many ideas they come up with. Clearly none since books are simply a means of passively storing knowledge and it takes a human to 'activate' that knowledge. While network theory may deal with abstract relationships between nodes and their connections, when applied to the real world, these nodes are 'things': people, species, businesses, servers, power stations, cities, communities, chemicals whatever, not abstractions such as 'idea spaces'.

So overall, while I found the book interesting, I didn't find the thesis particulalry convincing and found that it obscured rather then elucidated the lessons to be learned from the author's examples.

This book was a bit of a challenge. First, I am not totally convinced that Ogle has discovered anything new but makes it appear to be so by inventing creative terminology. He borrows his ideas from the emerging field of network science and it is somewhat difficult to follow his explanations. What makes it particularly difficult is his introduction of his laws with their new-fangled terminology. Anyway, it seems to me that he could have made it easier for his readers had he come up with less convoluted jargon. A lot of authors today oversimplify language to make their books accessible to the largest market; this one errs in the opposite direction.

A lot of what he does say makes sense but is expressed differenty than in the past. For example, the notion that there is an "expanded" mind in the sense that the environment does the thinking for you. An example is the alphabet, which is set up so that you can easily choose any one of 26 letters and come up with a word. You don't have to start from scratch. Also the notion of idea-spaces; that is, fields or areas or conceptual schema that have imbedded in them certain ways of seeing or thinking about the world. There is, for example, the idea space of classical science, where science is practiced in a partucular way, or the idea space of modernist architecture, where architects abide by certain rules and applications. When different idea-spaces come together; e.g. when Frank Gerhy linked architecture with modern art, something new emerges. This happens, according to Ogle, when "weak ties" are connected. This is not new. Many creativity gurus speak about connecting completely different things together to come up with something new. I believe in the past others referred to ideas as coming from the "ether" or just being out there wainting to be discovered. So there has been some sense of these concepts; Ogle is putting more flesh on them.

The really fascinating portions of the book are when Ogle goes into the specific history of a breakthrough - the discovery of the structure of DNA or the invention of the printing press, for example - especially the personal, cultural and social histories involved .

I am also not sure that I agree with some of his criteria for what is a breakthrough. For example, he includes the classification of perimenopause, or premenopausal syndrome, as a breakthrough. How is this so? How is this different then from the discovery of "repressed memories" a decade or so ago, when all of a sudden lots of people seemed to have them and therapists galore popped up to coax them out?

Finally, any book that talks about the discovery of ideas and does not mention Edward de Bono has missed a big contributor to the field. A lot of what Ogle says has been summarized in much simpler fashion by de Bono. Ogle's creative arc is de Bono's lateral thinking, for example. De Bono also popularized the use of techniques to move away from linear thinking and into the type of thinking that Ogle advocates.

In sum, there is a lot of good and interesting stuff here but it presented in a difficult to follow way. Supplement this book with De Bono's books on lateral thinking.

In "Smart World" Richard Ogle sets out to probe, demystify and explain how creative minds work when major discoveries bubble up -- often in wildly unexpected places and by unknown entrepreneurs, artists and scientists.

His tale blends history, science, sociology, linguistics and physics to tell of some major breakthroughs, including Gutenberg's printing press, Picasso's discovery of Cubism, how Watson & Crick uncovered DNA -- the twisting molecular structure that carries life's genetic blueprint, the personal computer explosion, architect Frank Gehry's dazzling Bilbao museum, and even the magical allure of a child's doll, Barbie.

Along the way Ogle introduces what he calls "idea-spaces," "hotpockets," and "small-world networks" to show how tectonic shifts in knowledge take hold.

Among his observations: some inventors succeed not by inventing from scratch, but by using bits of established ideas and then pushing that knowledge into a new direction that leads to a giant discovery. This method worked for Watson & Crick and for Gutenberg as well. Equally sharp is Ogle's explanation of how some potentially great ideas die -- Xerox's research team had a crackerjack PC design -- but a tiny rival, Apple, thanks to its founders Jobs and Wozniak, was better plugged into the critical hobbyist world, which in turn triggered the PC goldmine.

Although Ogle's book, published by Harvard Business School Press, is obviously targeted for business readers desperate to find the next big product, his 263 pages (excluding footnotes, bibliography and index) are so rich in material that it's too good for just a narrow audience.

"Smart World" is a smart book. Read it.

This is a strange, wonderful and not always easy book. Richard Ogle tackles a slippery question about the mind: Where do truly creative leaps originate? Studies of creativity and innovation are multiplying, but Ogle's book does something rare. It demonstrates how networking creates something new by navigating shared spaces. Its style and content will make it challenging to many readers. Though Ogle has a knack for original, striking phrases, a simpler style would have served the innate complexity of the subject matter. That aside, we recommend this book to everyone who is interested in innovation, creativity and the propagation of ideas through culture. The parallels Ogle draws among plastic dolls, Romantic paintings, the discovery of DNA and the development of the personal computer are striking and entertaining, and his concepts about how creativity uses "idea-spaces" and networks are wildly intriguing.

On the positive side the examples of major innovative concepts are very interesting and worth reading. Some of these examples are:
- Discovery of DNA
- Microcomputer revolution
- Barbie doll and
- Gutenberg's printing press.

On the negative side, the attempt to bring these different concepts into a overall creativity framework, although an heroic effort, results in a very difficult book to read and understand. And, when you are done with it, you wonder if you really can apply these ideas that he brings forth. Consequently, the last chapter and the last pages especially, left me somewhat disappointed.

However, I would recommend reading the book for the innovation examples, and see if you can obtain a perspective on how to use this.

I have been reading and re-reading this book for over two weeks. It is probably fair to say it's more than I bargained for - lots of fundamental reading here, which provides the foundations for the authors well-reasoned integration. My only humble suggestion to the author is that he provide a mindmap or a similar summary on his blog. That might be very useful for those who are interested in starting to applying his teachings. Great book that should be on everyone's nightstand!

We are surrounded by human engineering, cultural artifacts, vast libraries, and accumulated knowledge that is doubling every two years. This human-built space -- a hive of meaning that we have created and now inhabit; a space that guides our thinking and our understanding of the world; a legacy inherited by every new generation -- has been called the "extended mind."

This extended mind, Richard Ogle says, is nothing less than a "smart world" that enables creativity and provides the impetus for breakthrough innovation. Ogle introduces the concept of the "idea-space" -- a collection of knowledge, rules, paradigms, artifacts and assumptions that defines and guides a particular domain of human activity.

When idea-spaces collide, Ogle says -- when we transfer ideas from one domain to another -- it's a catalyst for creativity. Idea-spaces can be visualized as small-world networks. Some lie close together, others further apart. When idea-spaces are most disparate, he says, the collision is more spectacular. There is a much greater likelihood of breakthrough innovation.

Ogle provides examples of the collision of ideas from art, science, and Silicon Valley. All in all, this is a very good book, with many new tools for understanding the dynamics of creativity.

When I ran across the book Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity And the New Science of Ideas by Richard Ogle, I was intrigued. The "extended mind" concept, the idea that creativity is more than just what's in your head, is something that would change the way I think about how new concepts are formed. Generally speaking, the book delivers on the premise. Although there are places where it seems to get more conceptual than practical...

Contents: The Mystery of Breakthrough Creativity; Outing the Mind; Spaces to Think With; Genius, Imagination, and the Nature of Mind; The Fools on the Hill; Darwinian Networks, or Why the Fit Get Fitter; The Mathematical Ecology of Creativity; Sex and the Single Doll; Think Different; The Networked Dynamics of Risk; The Triumph of the Imagination; Robots, Poets, and the Law of Minimal Effort; Leadership, Imagination, and the Art of the Long Bet; Notes; Bibliography; Index; About the Author

The core concept (at least in my mind) of this book is the power of networks, of "idea-spaces" that allow seemingly disconnected patterns to form new realities. Ogle uses various examples, such as Crick and Watson figuring out the structure of DNA and Picasso's cubism in his paintings, to show how different idea-spaces influenced the discovery and direction of these individuals. The particular items that became the driving force for these people were there for anyone to see, and in fact many others viewed the same things. But no one else made the combinations and leaps that linked these various concepts in ways that changed the landscape. The story of Crick and Watson is especially revealing for Ogle's premise. Neither Crick or Watson were exceptional in their own research. What they did better than anyone else was to view what others had done, and then synthesize it into a new supposition, going beyond what anyone else had done on their own. So instead of creativity being confined to the focused work of one person, it instead becomes a result of casting a wide net to bring in and merge concepts that may not cross the boundaries on their own.

As I tend to be more pragmatic than theoretical, there were parts of this book that were a bit much for me. Many of the discussions of modern art and what the artists were trying to express seemed to be beyond me. Looking at a fuzzy painting and reading in vast amounts of emotions and meanings doesn't work in this mind. But understanding the rise of the personal computer, as well as how Barbie became a cultural icon were interesting and useful. And seeing my world as a network of idea-spaces is a different twist on how I perceive my environment. I have no doubt that Ogle's ideas will continue to influence the way I think for quite some time...

How do breakthrough ideas, products, services come to live? What is the real contribution of the so called `geniuses' to the process? How does our mind process information and reality in order to come up with novel ideas? This book presents, in an original and articulated fashion, possible intriguing answers to these and many other questions regarding the way we develop creativity and innovation. The author calls it `the new science of ideas' and step by step, through an entertaining narrative focusing on breakthroughs in several fields (some of them: the discovery of DNA, Picasso's cubism, microcomputers and the development of Apple, Gutemberg's development of large scale typeset printing), outlines a Model relevant to this `new science'. A Model very useful to frame, conceptualize and learn from the dynamics that developed such breakthroughs; it is also helpful to recognize and stimulate the development of novel ones. The structure of the Model is composed by three factors: Imagination, Intuition and Insight. The `proper interplay' of these three factors leads to breakthrough creativity. The book focuses on articulating both the nature and essence of such interplay. Let's unfold these dynamics by focusing on each component of the Model.

Imagination

First of all the author (Richard Ogle, an independent scholar, consultant and entrepreneur) introduces the concept of idea-space "an idea-space is a domain or world viewed from the perspective of the intelligence embedded in it". In other words an idea-space is a mix of concepts, rules, experiences and practices defining a certain kind of field and the way that such field works most effectively. For example any subject (math or literature) represents a specific idea-space. Depending on our profession we deal with simple or more complex idea-spaces on a daily basis. A key aspect that Ogle points out with his examples is the nature of the embedded intelligence within an idea-space: this form of intelligence does not simply depend on one person (one expert, one genius), it depends from the integration of several experiences and practices by several people. Ogle relates this observation to Andy Clark's concept of the `extended mind', in other words the realization that in our daily activities (as well as in the creative process) we utilize intelligence that it has become part of the knowledge available within the idea-space we are operating within, intelligence not direcly developed by us. The title of the book "Smart World" points out this very practical observation too often overlooked. Idea-spaces and the intelligence embedded within them make us smarter but at the same time also they potentially risk to blind us; to blind our full view of reality with its obstacles and its opportunities. As the author puts it: "Einstein observed, `The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them'. Clearly, Einstein grasped the paradoxical power of idea-spaces dense with accumulated intelligence to both empower and blind us". Within the Model, Imagination is what overrides the blind spots generated by an idea-space by linking idea-spaces that previously were unconnected and helping us to perceive and deal with reality in a novel way. This is the reason why we observe that a breakthrough is not caused by a sequential, linear sort of thinking but by a disconnected and disrupting one (shifting through and linking previously unconnected idea-spaces). In other words we talk about a creative leap of innovation vs an incremental one.

Intuition

This is the second key component to the Model. Intuition is relevant to the way we recognize patterns and relationships within a set of elements belonging to previously unconnected idea-spaces. The cases presented by Ogle clearly show that any real breakthrough depends upon the utilization of such pattern recognition in order to interconnect embedded intelligence from an idea-space to a different one. What works in an idea-space is going to work also in a different one if through imagination we are to connect them and through intuition we can identify similar internal dynamics among elements that can have a totally different nature: this potentially can generate a new idea-space in itself; Ogle writes: "Intuition is our navigational system for exploring novel idea-spaces".

Insight

This is sequentially the third key component to the Model. Ogle intruduces the concept: "Working together, intuition and imagination give rise to insight, the quintessential phenomenon of breakthrough creativity (...) imagination, guided by the pattern-recognizing powers of intuition, boldly jumps across intervening space to connect to whole new networks of meaning". Insight is what clearly manifests the breakthrough by shifting the networking process among idea-spaces from complexity to simplicity, from disorder to order. This way a new meaning is created and creativity takes shape into something novel that is quite understandable also from outside of the embedded intelligence that developed it. The author argues these dynamics are generated by a set of principles related to the networks science (in itself a quite novel idea-space developed in order to understand the nature of the close and remote interconnectedness among people, systems and ideas). As Ogle puts it: "Smart World claims that the right place to look for laws governing creative leaps is in network science, whose newly discovered principles drive the dynamics of the extended mind's component idea-spaces." The author draws from these principles to present a set of self-organizing laws fueling the shifts from simplicity to complexity and from disorder to order; specifically nine laws: 1) the law of tipping points, 2) the law of the fit get rich, 3) the law of the fit get fitter, 4) the law of spontaneous generation, 5) the law of navigation, 6) the law of hotspots, 7) the law of small worlds network, 8) the law of integration, 9) the law of minimal effort. The book articulates and exemplifies in detail the nature and flow of each law and these observations allow for the identification of a set of practical principles that according to Ogle we could all utilize in order to find our very own breakthrough. He writes: "Above all, trust your imaginative faculties as they surf embedded webs of intelligence near and far, and have the confidence that if your're up for the ride, the space of ideas, shaped by the laws of network dynamics, will do most of the hard thinking for you".

I consider the thesis presented by "Smart World" timely, intriguing and stimulating. The book is an invitation and a roadmap to tap into the global potential to better understand and give meaning to the reality we face; the invitation comes with a set of tools that we can choose to put to work in order to improve our reality through a real, focused and resourceful imagination. Are we up for the challenge?