October 7, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
A lot of folks seem to be thinking about innovation right now–including, it turns out, Bill Gates.
The Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist recently reviewed Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, by Steven Johnson, on his Web site, The Gates Notes.
Mr. Gates agrees with Mr. Johnson’s argument that innovation isn’t about “eureka” moments but instead taking existing ideas and putting them together in new ways.
“The decision to start Microsoft, for example, wasn’t based on a momentous flash of insight,” he writes. “It was based on incremental developments in a nascent personal-computing industry, the fact that Paul Allen and I had access to mainframe computers at the high school we attended, and our hunch about what people could do with computers in the future.”
What books and articles have influenced the way you think about fostering innovation? (P.S. Bill Gates, if you’re reading, we’d love to know what else is on your bookshelf.)
