The Adjacent Possible Is A Kind Of

When You Don't Have To Ask For Permission Innovation Thrives.

Some Great Minds Become Great By Turning The Rubble Of An Exploded Paradigm Into Something Consistent And Meaningful. Others Become Great By Laying The Gunpowder, Grain By Grain. Every Important Revolution Needs Both Kinds Of Minds To Complete Itself.

The Economics Of Television Syndication And Dvd Sales Mean That There's A Tremendous Financial Pressure To Make Programs That Can Be Watched Multiple Times, Revealing New Nuances And Shadings On The Third Viewing. Meanwhile, The Web Has Created A Forum For Annotation And Commentary That Allows More Complicated Shows To Prosper, Thanks To The Fan Sites Where Each Episode Of Shows Like 'lost' Or 'alias' Is Dissected With An Intensity Usually Reserved For Talmud Scholars.

What You End Up Seeing When You Look At History Is That People Who Have Been Good At Pushing The Boundaries Of Possibility, And Exploring Those Frontiers Of Good Ideas And Innovations, Have Rarely Done It In Moments Of Great Inspiration. They Don't Just Have A Brilliant Breakthrough Idea Out Of Nowhere And Leap Ahead Of Everyone Else.

If You Look At Where Innovation - Defined As Ideas, Not As Commercial Product - Tends To Live, The University System Is Remarkably Innovative.