It may come as no surprise to you that collaboration helps to shape new ideas. This video by author Steven Johnson perfectly shows how that works. Take your time, switch off your cell phone and shut the door for just a few minutes and allow yourself to plunge into the following thoughts come alive through an amazing cartoon.
The concept is that you have a partial idea or hunch that needs to be combined with another hunch to form a fully-developed, great idea. Sometimes patience and thought will get you there just fine. Generally your great thought will occur thanks to the combination of your idea with someone else’s. Johnson argues that one needs to place oneself in environments that foster good collaboration. He argues that while the web can often be a distraction, it can be a great environment to jointly develop great ideas as well. Your next great idea may therefore come to fruition by finding an (online) community that helps you to complement your ideas with other people’s feedback and ideas.
I especially like the motto shared towards the end “chance favours the connected mind”. The only element that seems to be somewhat implicit in Johnson’s perspective is the one of diversity. People and turtles are pictured in a uniform, stereotypical fashion. Wouldn’t diversity often provide an essential little nudge for chance to come about?
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