We take ideas from other people,from people we've learned from, from people we run into in the coffee shop,and we stitch them together into new forms and we create something new.That's really where innovation happens.And that means that we have to change some of our models of what innovation and deep thinking really looks like, right.I mean, this is one vision of it.Another is Newton and the apple, when Newton was at Cambridge.This is a statue from Oxford.You know, you're sitting there thinking a deep thought,and the apple falls from the tree, and you have the theory of gravity.

In fact, the spaces that have historically led to innovation tend to look like this, right.This is Hogarth's famous painting of a kind of political dinner at a tavern,but this is what the coffee shops looked like back then.This is the kind of chaotic environment where ideas were likely to come together,where people were likely to have new, interesting, unpredictable collisions -- people from different backgrounds. So, if we're trying to build organizations that are more innovative,we have to build spaces that -- strangely enough -- look a little bit more like this.This is what your office should look like,is part of my message here.

Note: these paragraphs are from the TED Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html