The secret to innovation is combining odds and ends, writes Steven Johnson

On September 25, 2010 his article on The Genius of the Tinkerer was posted on WSJ.com. In this article, Steven Johnson gives us an important new understanding of the roots of innovation and a set of useful strategies for cultivating our own creative breakthroughs.

In the year following the 2004 tsunami, the Indonesian city of Meulaboh received eight neonatal incubators from international relief organizations. Several years later, when an MIT fellow named Timothy Prestero visited the local hospital, all eight were out of order, the victim of power surges and tropical humidity, along with the hospital staff’s inability to read the English repair manual.

Mr. Prestero and the organization he cofounded, Design That Matters, had been working for several years on a more reliable, and less expensive, incubator for the developing world…

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