| | |  | John Seely Brown | | Home » | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | "A provocative look at the creative process..." --BusinessWeek, July 9, 2007 | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Richard Ogle | | Hardcover:
| 303 pages | | Publisher:
| Harvard Business School Press | | Publication Date:
| June 05, 2007 | | ISBN:
| 1591394171 | | Package Length:
| 9.3 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.4 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.05 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 11 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 Applying the science of networks to creativity Jan 18, 2008
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.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A bit dryDec 01, 2007
Very "out of the box", not much of a page-turner, but it does spark some interest. The narratives are somewhat intruiging.
4 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Cover Better Than the Book--Good Book but DenseNov 24, 2007
I have a lot of respect for Robert Morris' reviews, so read that one for a more positive spin on this book. I tend to have less patience than most might given my broad and eclectic reading habits.
I bought the book for the title, which is crafty marketing, but the content does not deliver on the implied promise. The book loses one star for failing to integrate the ten books below (I could list 20 but Amazon limits us to 10) and for failing to credit the Tofflers, my most respected colleagues since they wrote about me in 1993 ("The Future of the Spy" in War and Anti-War: Making Sense of Today's Global Chaos. The Tofflers, not Kevin Kelly, are the ones who made "The Third Wave" a core concept for all of us.
In addition to the Tofflers many works, including Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century, I was disappointed at the absence of reference to anything by Tielhard de Chardin ("noosphere") or any of the following:
World brain
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, & the Economic World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
See also "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption]] Available free in two forms online, as will be my next three edited works, one each in 2008 on Collective Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, and Commercial Intelligence.
Chomsky, Lessig, many others could have been usefully probed by the author, as well as the literature on hackers and hacking, including Sherley Turkle's classic, "Computers and the Human Spirit." I am friends with Doug Englebart, far more important to the Internet than the email guy, and an elected member of the Silicon Valley Hackers, the follow on the the Home Brew group, and including Larry Page, Phil Zimmermann, and of course Lee Felsenstein and Rob Tow. So I confess, portions of this book struck me as both selective and misleading.
Now, having provided the context that this author failed to explore, I will praise the book as a deep but dense work, one that synthesized some but not all, and creates some but not all, of the key concepts we need for charting the future.
He could not have been expected to be familiar with two books that came out at the same time as his, "Group Genius" and "Five Minds," but among them all, I rate the first as the best, and the second as its equal with a different perspective. See my reviews. This book, if I had to do it over again, I would assign to someone else and have them do a two-page memorandum on its key points. It was not fun to read, but would make an excellent reference work for assigned reading at the college senior or first-year master's level.
Were I doing the two-page memo, among the author's noteworthy contributions are the following:
+ Baffling problem
+ Break-through creativity
+ Extended mind
+ Cubism
+ Idea-spaces
+ Long bets
+ Communities of practice
+ Cultural blindness
+ Paradigms
+ Framing
+ Hubs (too much connectivity can be debilitating)
On the latter, my prime laptop lost all power, one reason I have done so much reading over this break, and the outcome has left me a real believer in a concept I now call "digital fasting." Just as I try not to eat at all one day a week, I now see the value of rejecting the computer one day a week, at least.
Not covered:
+ Heuristics
+ Ants
+ Bacteria
Four I's (I really like this):
01 Imagination
02 Intuition
03 Insight
04 Intelligence
Code of Creativity:
01 Tipping points
02 Fit get rich
03 Fit get fitter
04 Spontaneous generation
05 Navigation
06 Hotspots
07 Small-world networks
08 Integration
09 Minimal effort
I will buy and read "Fire in the Valley" on the author's recommendation.
I would like very much to see the author produce this book in a second revised edition that relegates much of the content to distilled boxes or appendices, and provides the CEO with an easier to follow and absorb version such as are provided by Keither Sawyer ("Group Genius") and Howard Gardner ("Five Minds for the Future").
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
The way innovation really works...Aug 31, 2007
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?
Networks of ideasAug 29, 2007
Do you think up innovative ideas all by yourself? Or does the world of ideas and theories think for you? Richard Ogle's Smart World suggests the latter: that you are a mere node in a network of developing thought and ideas and theories.
Through examples ranging from cubism to Barbie to the architecture of Frank Gehry and with grounding in network science, Ogle proposes that geniuses don't think solely by or for themselves but rather find and activate links across divergent spaces of thought. Ogle identifies a number of laws at work in our smart world, from the law of tipping points to the law of hotspots to the law of integration and more.
Ogle is saying more in his book than just "people work with other people to come up with innovative ideas." He explains how an underlying network of idea spaces and people gives rise to creative genius, in an emergent, bottom-up way. He has applied the new science of networks -- itself an example of the smart world in action -- to human creativity.
The examples given in the book are quite detailed, perhaps too detailed for some readers. I could imagine a shorter, more accessible version of this book along the lines of The Tipping Point that might find more readers. But you shouldn't hesitate to buy it just because it's lengthy and at times complex. You can skim it first to get the main ideas, then reread the parts that fascinate you most later on.
I was especially glad to see examples taken from beyond the realm of technology. Ogle makes his thesis more compelling by discussing creativity in art, architecture, education, and even toy marketing.
If you are interested in the science of networks, you might also like Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts or Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.
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