I have been studying inventors and the process of invention for most of my life. As an inventor myself (Learn more in my bio) it is a subject that generates questions, awe, gratitude for their sacrifice and a powerful motivation to discover how a culture could support more of us to invent. I am not the first to delve into the topic of inventors and their inventions. Because medical devices have been my focus I have explored invention in that area more than others. Each of the books I read on that topic captures the good motivation, drive, and responsibility that most medical inventors feel. Just like an invention, the book I am currently writing did not happen in isolation. I have been inspired and influenced by who I work with, where I have traveled and books I have read.

There are many books published on the topic of inventorship that discuss who, where, what, when, and how invention and innovation happen. I will discuss some of my favorites below. I think all these books have elements of truth in them. On the other hand, none of them is completely right. The actual truth lies in an aggregation or integration of what they say. It is to that end that I launched on the journey and arduous process of writing my own book on the topic – in what I hope is a new and impactful way.

In The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner, he states that bureaucracy is the antithesis of creativity and that permissive cities can go through windows of intellectual incandescence. This is very similar to Richard Florida talking about the power of place in popular culture. Culture shapes us. Mr. Florida states repeatedly that great diverse cities attract the creative class.

Technology, tolerance, talent, diversity, and eccentricity all go together. Creative people have chosen to live in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Portland, and Seattle, as well as smaller towns with access to those innovation centers. There is no absolute formula for creating an attractive hub city for the creative class. From England’s Thames Valley or in the UAE in Qatar, it’s been tried and failed. The creative class must inherently want to live there.  How do you replicate Silicon Valley and its very successful culture? Creative people steal and mooch ideas. The Greeks perfected what others started. Creativity is a public good. We get the genius we deserve. 

Florida also states that constraints and hardship drive creativity. All great change comes from someone saying, “I don’t know.” Catastrophe precedes creativity. Some chaos is good. Florence became great after the Black death. Bad things lead to good things. The pot must be stirred. Comfort is bad.

One of my favourite books on creativity is by Stephen Johnson. He wrote those wonderful books, The Invention of Air and Where Good Ideas Come From. He described the coffeehouse as the space where ideas went to have sex.

He identified shared recurring patterns and challenged some tropes. The stereotype is that an idea occurs in a flash, a stroke, an epiphany, or a eureka moment. But he says the reality is that an idea is not a single thing. It is, in fact, based on lineage, or as I put it; a family tree composed of networks of preceding thoughts. Very rarely does a new network of thought, one that has never existed before, occur simultaneously.

The majority of ideas are stitched together from other combinatorial ideas. Unpredicted interactions and coffee houses, through fellowship and conversation with diverse acquaintances are essential to where new ideas come from. In the Rutherford laboratory, where Ernest Rutherford trained his PhD’s, nine Nobel winning projects emerged. The key to Rutherford’s success was his behavior during the weekly lab meetings. It was the hub of the liquid intellectual network.