"Where Good Ideas Come From"

I'm always amazed at the pace Steven Johnson keeps. He runs his own start-up web company, writes best-selling books, Tweets great insight on social media and other topics, and who knows what else. He is one of our great modern thinkers. 

Having said that I've been holding off on reading his book "Where Good Ideas Come From" even though the title sounds great. I read a few related newspaper and magazine stories/reviews and figured I was good.

But after viewing this promotional video, I'm having second thoughts on diving into the whole book itself. Berlin's video narration is enticing enough, but the animation explaining the thought process is extraordinary (How do they map out that storyline, let alone do the time-lapse video? That alone is a great idea).

The key takeaway for me from Berlin's video message is that great ideas incubate over time, evolving as give-and-take with others occurs. I have all kinds of ideas kicking around in my head, but many are loose ends that seem frayed. Perhaps there is hope after all that the chaos in my mind will coalesce and spit out some brilliance. Hopefully some time reasonably soon. 

Questioning conventional wisdom in sports

You knew that with the success of Malcolm Gladwell and the "Freakonomics" series,  someone smart would apply the same concept of debunking conventional thinking to sports. 

That "someone smart" is the team of Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, who have written "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won."

"Scorecasting" won't be released until Jan. 25, but Sports Illustrated has published at least two excerpts. One, apparently published only in the print version of the magazine, exhaustively determines home-field advantage can be traced to only one thing: referee bias. A second excerpt, "The Curse of the No. 1 Draft Pick," is posted at SI.com and confirms what some of us assumed: the top draft pack often comes with more misery than success. 

Both excerpts are great reads. As I noted, it's common knowledge No. 1 picks are often busts, but Moskowitz and Wertheim get into the real factors driving that reality. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the Gladwell and Freakonomics books and can't wait to get my hands on "Scorecasting." 

The Hub now free on iPad

The Hub magazine -- an always interesting and eclectic bimonthly marketing publication -- has just launched an iPad app.

The good news for consumers is all issues back through 2009 can be downloaded for free.

If you're a newbie, start with the latest issue for January-February, whose theme of innovation highlights fun stuff from Ford, which has emerged from near disaster a few years ago to becoming one of the most progressive and risk-taking companies in the world.