What’s The Big Idea? 5 Books To Inspire Innovation
NPR compiled a list of 5 books to show us where ideas come from and how to inspire them.
1. The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel
Kandel seeks out why 19th-century Vienna was such a fountain of new ideas. He finds the city benefited from a rare intellectual dialogue, in which artists and scientists were inspired by each other’s work. Then, Kandel tries to apply this model to the 21st century.
2. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
The human mind takes our experiences and organizes it into stories. Gottschall argues that stories are like an invisible force that surround and influences the human mind. In fact, stories are so omnipresent (consider our dreams) that we take them for granted.
3. The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
Bell Labs consisted of 1,200 scientists from every discipline. Gertner explores the people and processes behind their stunning list of inventions leading to 7 Nobel Prizes. He concludes, to make big breakthroughs, we should invest in research institutes where scientists from all backgrounds can pursue seemingly non-commercial ideas.
4. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Kahneman asks people questions, inviting them to contemplate various scenarios and bets. He then uses their answers to summarize a list of innate human biases. Although they might seem obvious, these mental flaws prove to be an important refutation of human rationality.
5. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum
Blum takes a journey inside the infrastructure of the internet. He maintains that the Internet has become too important to remain a mystery to us. If we are going to preserve the innovative potential of the Web, then we need to understand where it came from.
