Connections
In 1932, agricultural biologist Max Kleiber published a meticulous study showing that in most animals, the relationship between their body mass and metabolism follows a mathematical equation “quarter-power scaling.” From Kleiber’s Law, it follows that an elephant 1000 times heavier than a mouse will not have a metabolic rate 1000 larger, but only about 5.6 times that of the mouse [1000 ^ (1/4) = 5.6]. The popular explanation is that life forms are highly integrated and optimized hierarchical systems. Do the same rules apply to systems above individual organisms?
Building in Kleiber’s work, in 2007, theoretical physicist Geoffrey West and his team published another study concluding that when it comes to energy expenditure (from electrical cables to number gas stations), a city functions similarly as a living (animal) superorganism. A city 50 times larger than a small town would only use as much of ~2.6 times more energy than the second [50 ^ (1/4) = 2.6]. Other parameters such as those related to innovation (e.g., number of “creative” jobs, number of inventions and patents, wealth) also follow a scaling relationship with the size of the city. However, these innovative outcomes grow MUCH faster than Kleiber’s Law would predict.*
Steven Johnson’s book on “the natural history of innovation” lists key factors for you and me to consider:
The human-based network
A new idea corresponds to a new network, a new constellation of neurons firing in sync with each other in our brain. The simplest way to have new ideas is not to think very hard but to be exposed to more ideas and pieces of information, to begin with. Innovative environments are those in which there are more dots to connect.
Life on Earth is a network based on carbon. From nucleic acids (the code of life) to proteins (main structure) and carbohydrates (primary energy source). Without carbon working as the universal chemical connector, the other chemical elements could not have recombined into animated organic molecules. We are all potential carbon-like super connectors. City coffee shops, conference rooms, and bars become the Petri dishes where the experiments and reactions occur. Without cities, it would have been difficult for civilizations to evolve by extending the pool of minds from which to borrow ideas to connect.
Inventions are inevitable
In their classic (1922) essay “Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution,” William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas argued that the right cultural and sociological environment was responsible for the independent invention of key innovations such as calculus (by Newton and by Leibniz in the late 1600s), the telephone (by Gray and by Bell in the late 1800s), or the airplane (by Langley and by Wright brothers in the early 1900s). Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were also independently inspired by demographer Thomas Robert Malthus when coming up with their theory of natural selection. However, they were better civilians than the previous examples, so they co-authored a study in 1858.
Darwin likely had the basic idea of natural selection before reading Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population” (1798). However, it was not after reading it that his hunch became a strong theory. A good environment is a four-dimensional space. You must be in the right place and at the right time. The reason why the iPhone was not invented in the 1990s (by General Magic) is that the environment wasn’t ready yet. Some innovations might be inevitable, given the favorable environment, just like life on Earth (see the Miller-Urey experiments).
Categories are limits
Makes sense to divide your clothes between winter and summer? Your food between perishables and canned? What about Earth’s surface into political countries? Sometimes categories are useful, others only barriers to progress. When it comes to capturing our hunches, we should be aware of the limitations imposed by making categories. A prime example: The World Wide Web started as a collection of web-like ideas. This is the account of its inventor Tim Berners-Lee:
Journalists have always asked me what the crucial idea was, or what the singular event was, that allowed the Web to exist one day when it hadn’t the day before. They are frustrated when I tell them there was no ‘Eureka!’ moment … Inventing the World Wide Web involved my growing realization that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, weblike way. And that awareness came to me through precisely that kind of process. The Web arose as the answer to an open challenge, through the swirling together of influences, ideas, and realizations from many sides, until, by the wondrous offices of the human mind, a new concept jelled. It was a process of accretion, not the linear solving of one problem after another.
Commonplace your ideas
The great minds of the 17th and 18th centuries (like Francis Bacon or John Locke) started to write important passages from their readings into a “commonplace book.” Historian Robert Darnton explains that instead of reading books from A to Z, these folks would read in small bits, jumping from part to part and from book to book following the thread of specific interest. They would “copy and paste” different text fragments from different sources. Reading and writing were, therefore, inseparable activities—as they should. These would become their hunch repositories. Eventually, after adding their unique twist, they would become their own books.
Serendipity
Go with the flow. Good stuff happens when we let go. Errors are an essential part of the equation. As Thomas Kuhn would say, scientific revolutions occur when “anomalies” (errors) in the data accumulate faster than the existing theories can explain them. Accidents are essential. Ask Alexander Fleming how penicillin was discovered? Furthermore, sometimes, things that serve a purpose in one field can be borrowed for a different one (i.e., exaptation). In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg started tweaking the wine press and the movable type (woodblock type was invented centuries before in China) to come up with the archetype of the modern printing press. Bibles first, heretic books later, the recombination of pre-existing parts provided the platform for the scientific revolution in the next century.
Collisions
Why are cities epicenters of creativity and innovation? In his influential study, sociologist Claude Fischer concluded:
The theory presented here explains the “evil” and the “good” of cities simultaneously. Criminal unconventionality and innovative (e.g., artistic) unconventionality both nourished by vibrant subcultures. Less pleasing, perhaps, is the conclusion that it may be difficult to achieve the latter without the former, for they both result from the same dynamics.
In other words, big cities nurture subcultures: different people, contrasting ideas, and lifestyles. Living together causes collisions, some of which are positive. When different perspectives from different life fields come together, existing solutions can find the right problem. Great ideas result from connecting the dots, from recombining existing ideas, not from protecting them as if we own them. Here a short recipe to nurture good connections:
“Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the link; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, re-invent.”
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From (2010)
PS: Given that the Internet now allows us to connect with people and ideas through time and space from almost anywhere. Are cities still necessary?
*The Bettencourt et al. (2007) study also concluded something a bit ominous:
“This difference suggests that, as population grows, major innovation cycles must be generated at a continually accelerating rate to sustain growth and avoid stagnation or collapse.”
Cover image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.