The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.

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.

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

The fusion of art and technology that we call interface design.

Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities—a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity—but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies.

Organizations that empower folks further down the chain or try to get rid of the big hierarchal chains and allow decision making to happen on a more local level end up being more adaptive and resilient because there are more minds involved in the problem.

Who is giving the orders to ants? No one. They are self-organizing. Each of our immune systems get smarter over the years as its biochemical parts share information, and it responds with individualized defenses, but it isn't conscious and it has no memory. The host of that party didn't decree that everyone would gather in the kitchen, but it happened anyway. Emergence means we sometimes act in concert for better or worse.