It may not be possible to 'win the future,' in President Obama's words, but if we're going to encourage more innovation, it's not enough for us to just dig in and work harder. We also need to encourage surprise and serendipity. We need to play each other's instruments.

I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons & Dragons, or the geopolitical strategy of games like Diplomacy, a kind of chess superimposed onto actual history.

Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio - all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.

I love those stretches where I've just been a writer - when I haven't been doing Internet start-ups - where I pretty much eliminate meetings from my life.

This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age.

Those that regularly come into contact with people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas.

One of the founding moments of public health in the 19th century effectively poisoned the water supply of London much more effectively than any modern day bioterrorist could have ever dreamed of doing.