The innovator's guide
to compounding connections
slinker The episode explores transformation by refraction, the art of bending a familiar subject through a new lens to reveal unseen purposes. It chronicles the journey of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who used a career-threatening injury to re-imagine combat as a philosophy of fluid adaptability. Lee applied the principle of “being like water” to move … Read more
The episode explores transformation by extension, the process of taking observations from one field and extending them to other fields to reveal new insights. I discuss how theoretical physicist Geoffrey West connects the mathematical rules governing animal biology to the life cycles of cities and corporations and other man-made networks. Rather than focusing on how … Read more
This episode features Chapter Five of the audio book Singular Links. The episode explores transformation by expansion, how small, ordinary units, when carefully assembled, can give rise to something entirely new. The episode chronicles the artist Chuck Close and shows how constraint, repetition, and aggregation can become engines of reinvention. Rather than breaking things down … Read more
This episode features Chapter Four of the audio book Singular Links. The episode explores the Adjacent Possible in action: how innovation unfolds step by step, how new combinations unlock new doors, and why progress tends to accelerate rather than move at a constant pace.
This episode features Chapter Three of the audio book Singular Links. The episode explores the defining characteristics of transformative connections: how they reveal hidden structure, create emergent properties, and expand what’s possible; how small, simple elements, thoughtfully connected, can solve problems and open doors.
This episode features Chapter Two of the audio book Singular Links. The episode follows the early curiosity of Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, and shows how stripping a complex system down to its most basic elements can unlock entirely new possibilities.
This episode features Chapter One of the audio book Singular Links. The episode explores how innovation and meaning emerge not from accumulating ideas, but from connecting them. Through examples drawn from art, science, business, and history, it introduces the concept of the singular link, a connection that transforms what it joins into something fundamentally new.
Here is a preview of the first section of Singular Links: The Innovator’s Guide to Compounding Connections, my soon-to-be-published book arriving next month. Introduction — Singular Links In autumn 2011, Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan was ground zero for the Occupy Wall Street protests. If you were there, you felt chaos, a place twitching and … Read more
Take a moment to step back. Widen your perspective and see your actions in the biggest picture possible. The universe is constantly in motion. Gravity and inertia carry planets in their orbits, the Moon and Sun drive the rising and falling of the tides, Earth’s tilt brings the shifting of the seasons, and sunlight fuels … Read more
Throughout this blog, I’ve mostly avoided saying things like “You need to do this” or “You need to do that.” Whenever an author tells me what I need to do, I roll my eyes. How do they know what I need? They don’t even know me. It always sounds a little self-important, like someone pretending … Read more
The previous post discussed Claude Shannon’s lifelong question, “What’s a better way to get information?” This question gnawed at the Father of the Information Age from his boyhood fence-telegraph to MIT’s differential analyzer to wartime cipher machines at Bell Labs. Each of these systems was innovative yet overbuilt, weighed down by its own complexity. Now … Read more
It was the 1920s in rural Michigan, not far from the little logging town of Gaylord, and a skinny boy in a wool cap was wondering, “What’s a better way to get information?” He had connected a battery to the wire fence that ran to his friend’s house half a mile away. The fence wire … Read more
It has been more than half a century since Bruce Lee passed away, but the evolution he experienced from a potential career-ending injury serves as a lesson for innovators, improvisors, and creators of all stripes. Lee demonstrated what I call transformation through refraction. For those who only know Bruce Lee as an actor performing choreographed … Read more
Up close, the paintings of Chuck Close look like swarms of color fragments. Step back, and suddenly a vivid face emerges, alive with detail. That simple shift in perspective holds a lesson for innovators everywhere. I call it transformation through expansion. The idea is simple: small, ordinary units, when linked together in certain ways, can … Read more
I was back in New York recently and made a stop at the East 86th Street subway station. Tucked into the walls there are Chuck Close’s mosaics, giant portraits staring at commuters and shimmering in tile and glass. They are a fitting tribute to an artist whose life’s work was obsessed by faces, even though … Read more
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” That old saying highlights the importance of hard work and stick-to-itiveness. But that ninety-nine percent isn’t the real mystery. The interesting part is that one percent. Where does inspiration actually come from? How do new ideas arrive in our heads? Think about Archimedes shouting “Eureka!” in … Read more
You and I don’t see the world the same way, and that’s what makes things interesting. Your perspective — like mine — is shaped by a mix of everything you’ve lived and learned: family, culture, school, media, values. These are filters that shape what you notice, what you trust, what you question. And over time, … Read more
In the fall of 2011, I was standing in the middle of New York’s Zuccotti Park during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests. There were tents, handmade signs, Guy Fawkes masks from V for Vendetta, anarchist newspapers, libertarian tracts, socialist manifestos. The energy was raw, unruly, electric. The air smelled of weed and … Read more
Someone recently told me, “I read your blog, but I’m not sure what it’s about.” I appreciated the honesty. It hadn’t occurred to me that the core idea might be unclear — mostly because it’s so clear in my own head. But since I haven’t explained it well enough, then let’s unpack it in more … Read more
When a new discovery lands in your mind, it doesn’t just arrive — it splashes. It’s a drop of water falling into a still glass of water. But not gently — disruptively. It punches a crater into the surface, sending ripples outward, stirring mini-currents and eddies below, launching a column upward. Some discoveries rewire your … Read more
I’m going to just come right out and say it. This blog post is about how the world tends toward chaos unless people act, and there’s some noble beauty to be found in that activity. OK, there it is. You can stop reading right now and go do something else if you like, because it … Read more
Alright, let’s talk about your 168 hours. We all get the same amount of time each week (24×7), but it’s what we do with the time we have that counts. Since tonight is Oscar night, let’s look at this topic like a movie – the pacing, the plot, it all changes depending on the different … Read more
There is a colorful story from ancient India about the origins of chess. The inventor of the game brought it to a king who, impressed, offered him a reward of his choosing. The man asked for a single grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two for the second, four for the … Read more
Today we explore a fascinating theory known as the Adjacent Possible and examine its application through an analyst’s approach to evaluating a potential stock investment. As you’ll see, this concept extends far beyond financial markets. It carries implications for many aspects of innovation, decision-making, and problem-solving. Theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman introduced the Theory of the … Read more
Today we elaborate on our previous discussions here and here about the work of Geoffrey West, the lessons of universal scaling laws, and key considerations for building things that we hope will grow. There was a time back in the 1990s when everywhere Geoffrey West looked, he saw fractions. Not just any fractions, but the … Read more
Why don’t dogs grow to be as large as horses? As we’ll see, the answer to the question is pertinent to more than just pet lovers and eccentrics. It has relevance for entrepreneurs, corporate strategists, social scientists, epidemiologists, and others interested in understanding how things grow — and why they stop growing. In a recent … Read more
Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist, has discovered some remarkable scaling laws that turn out to be useful in many domains, including biology, urban planning, economics, and corporate strategy. West researched the food consumption of animals (including humans) and found that larger animals use energy more efficiently than smaller ones. For instance, imagine a woman … Read more
This week someone posed the question, “If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?” My first thought was to choose the most unconventional person possible. I mean, the purpose of this hypothetical dinner would be to capture some new perspectives on the world, and so I … Read more
Claude Shannon really enjoyed thinking about problems and tinkering with mechanical devices, but he was not a big fan of publishing papers. Throughout his life, he kept copious notes, sketches, and personal journals related to his work and ideas, mathematical lemmas, theoretical problems, and musings about wide-ranging topics, from juggling to robotics to music to … Read more
In a previous post, we talked about how the decision-making process is the act of rescuing one potentiality from a field of uncertainty and delivering it permanently into the certainty of your past. Think about that for a moment. When you are faced with a decision, there is an array of possible outcomes based on … Read more
The hedge fund manager Michael Burry said he met his wife through the dating site Match.com with a profile that read, “I am a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans.” Burry said she wrote back, “You’re just what I’ve been looking for.” She understood that if … Read more
This is the first of a series of posts about Claude Shannon, mathematician, engineer, and computer scientist whose work beginning in the late ’30s helped to define the Information Age that emerged over the subsequent decades. Shannon is largely credited for having developed Information Theory. Over the next few posts, we’ll dive into some of … Read more
In recent posts about Bruce Lee, we looked at his technical prowess as a fighter, including his use of the one-inch punch and the stop-hit, as well as a fight that exposed the limitations of his approach. By 1964, at the age of 23, Lee had become a fighter who possessed blinding speed, incredible strength … Read more
In hand-to-hand combat, being taller has advantages, all else equal. If you are taller than your opponent, your reach will tend to be longer than your opponent’s, meaning you can strike from a distance that is outside your opponent’s range. To counter, your opponent has to lunge forward to reach you, making him more vulnerable. … Read more
The year was 1964. The scene was a small residential garage in Oakland, California, that served as a martial-arts school run by Bruce Lee. The space was cluttered with homemade sparring devices pieced together by Bruce’s assistant James, who was a welder by trade, making it appear like a cross between a boxing gym and … Read more
Bruce Lee was neither tall nor heavy, but he could beat up larger opponents. What he lacked in brawn, he made up in speed, smarts, and heart. He also knew how to put on a show. The son of an opera singer and film actor, young Bruce Lee grew up in show business. He happened … Read more
When you are born, your world is small. Small eyes. Small ears. Small face brushing against your small blanket. As you start to learn, your world grows. It gets filled with images and sounds and discoveries. Stuff reveals itself to you, like unfurling flowers with intoxicating scents. At first, the stuff you learn is mostly … Read more
A recurring theme in this blog is about connecting the unconnected. But how do you know when unconnected things can be connected? As with lateral thinking, sometimes it helps to change your perspective. Here are a few mental devices that can help you do just that. I want to introduce something I call the Rewind … Read more
Let’s unpack the concept of entropy, which is an abstract term loosely connected to the idea of randomness. The term “entropy” appears in different fields of study with different meanings. In thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, entropy describes the disorder or dispersion of energy in a system. In information theory, entropy measures the uncertainty of information … Read more
I’m fascinated with this idea that simple things can interact to create complex results. Think about that for a moment. Sometimes you can combine things in such a way as to create properties that are greater than the properties of the things being combined. They adopt heightened characteristics when they interact. Nature is full of … Read more
When observing singular links, you see one thing joining to another thing to create some new thing. Sperm joining egg creates a zygote. A spark joining gunpowder creates ignition. A hot poker from the fireplace joining water creates steam. In each of these cases, the joining process suddenly creates something new. Take a moment to … Read more
When two elements join together to propagate something new, there exists a certain reciprocity in the relationship. The term reciprocity speaks to the way they interact and the way they influence each other. You can see examples of reciprocal relationships everywhere in the natural world. Take the reciprocal relationship among bees and flowers. Bees visit … Read more
There is a riddle that asks how a prisoner could escape over a high wall without leaving any evidence. How could he pull it off? The name of the riddle reveals how. It is called the Ice Block Wall Escape. The prisoner freezes water to form an ice block, stands on the ice to climb … Read more
An essential step in developing good ideas is discarding bad ones. The writers’ vivid expression “Murder your darlings” suggests that even your favorite ideas should be trashed if they don’t advance your project. You might have meticulously crafted the most inspiring characters, juicy plot lines, and pithy phrases since the Bard of Avon himself, but … Read more
When I moved to New York City in my twenties, I was determined to forge a career as a working artist. In that Darwinian pool of ambition, the most successful artists were the ones who could generate a dependable stream of original work. They seemed to always be developing multiple ideas simultaneously. It was tempting … Read more
It has been said that writers don’t necessarily have more ideas than other people; it’s just that they notice when they do have ideas. Writers develop a sort of metacognition, which is an awareness of one’s own thought process. In fact, this process isn’t unique to writers; it is prevalent in anyone who devotes mental … Read more
In the post The Three Types of Transformation, we discussed refracting as one of the three types of transformation, along with expanding and contracting. You can read the full post here. Recall, refracting is when you transform something by changing its purpose. I was in an airport toy store recently, and although it had just … Read more
Many of these blog posts discuss practices you can use to discover singular links. These fall into three categories, each involving a different way of transforming the subject of your work. They include, Expanding, when you transform something by creating new iterations of it. Contracting, when you transform something by removing some elements of it. … Read more
“The best ideas are born from the union of disparate thoughts.” – Unknown Before September 11, 2001, the idea to take down skyscrapers using commercial airplanes had not occurred to many people. It had obviously occurred to some people, including the group of terrorists who had been secretly plotting for months, but it had … Read more
You may wonder if anyone can put together singular links, or if certain people are better at it than others. Spoiler alert, yes, anyone can. However, since there are many different kinds of brains, some people are better at making certain types of connections than others. Harold Gardner, developmental psychologist, researcher, and educator, formulated the … Read more
Sometimes it seems that everything in the known universe has already been comprehensively explored, discovered, labeled, mapped, dissected, cross-examined, catalogued, abbreviated, acronymified, domain-named, and proffered at the low low price. “Operators are standing by!” Google Maps has rendered naked every square mile of the planet’s ample surface. Wikipedia has ambitiously aggregated the entire stockpile of … Read more
I remember my first visit to New York City when I walked into a deli to order some breakfast. There was a cacophony of activity and voices and characters scurrying around like ants in a tree stump. Someone yelled from behind the counter, “Who’s next,” and two or three people shouted their orders. The deli … Read more
singular [ sing-gyuh-ler ] adjective being one of a kind; unique exceptional; extraordinary; remarkable unusual; conspicuous link [ lingk ] noun a bond between one part and another anything serving to connect two things or situations, especially where one may affect the other singular link [ sing-gyuh-ler lingk ] noun phrase a novel construct derived … Read more
Here is a metaphor in three parts. Part One Imagine you spent your whole life in an underground cave. You were born in the cave and you grew up there. You were unaware that anything existed outside your cave. All the people and all the objects in your life were lit by dim lights on … Read more
How do you consciously link the person you are now to the person you will become in the future? The first step is to recognize that you are a complex creature made up of many parts. Although you go by your own name and you have one birth date and one set of fingerprints, you … Read more
I really like the concept of individuation, which speaks to a process of becoming individualized, distinct, unique, recognizable. Individuation is the opposite of assimilation, homogenization, blending in. Individuation is the moth that emerges among caterpillars. It’s the flower growing from a crack in the pavement and the volcanic island rising up from the ocean. It … Read more
As I said in the previous post, when I was a teenager, the two most important adult role models who were not my parents were a former WWII soldier in the German army named Kurt and a concentration camp survivor named Saul. Despite their different backgrounds and cultures, Kurt and Saul had a lot in … Read more
When I was a teenager, the two most important adult role models who were not my parents were a former WWII soldier in the German army named Kurt and a concentration camp survivor named Saul. I met Kurt when I was a child, and he was older than my parents, closer to my grandparents’ age. … Read more
When I was a teenager, I had a pet mouse. I enjoyed holding it in my hand and walking around the house with it. Pretty soon I was leaving the house with the mouse. Eventually I started carrying it with me around the neighborhood, even on the public bus. Believe me, you can learn a … Read more
You can see the past. It is etched in your memory. Events that happened, happened. You experienced those events. You know what happened. You were there. You lived them. But the future, that is something different. The future is unknown. You haven’t seen it yet. The future is pregnant with potential. It is yet unrealized. … Read more
Imagine that time is a road. If you look in one direction you see the past, and the other direction shows the future. The place on that road where you currently stand is the present. Take a moment and visualize this in your mind. OK. The catch is, since the present is always moving, you … Read more
So far we have been diving into singular links in the context of adding one thing to another thing to create an altogether new thing. This describes a cumulative process. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three. But there is another way to think about singular links, … Read more
According to a statistical model, I will die on August 17, 2035. My dad died young. My mom was closer to average age when she died. If my lifespan is exactly equal to the average of lifespans, August 17, 2035 will be my last day of life. OK, I admit, this is a pretty crude … Read more
When I was 19, I was alone in a hospital room with my grandmother when she passed away. The term “passed away” seems spot-on from my perspective then, as it does now, because what I witnessed was a kind of movement. One instant Grandma was laying there alive, breathing, transmitting signals to the hospital vital … Read more
Let’s talk about music. Let’s talk about how musical notes can create singular links. When you play a note on a piano or any instrument, you are actually hearing several notes wrapped together. Let’s say you play what piano players call the A2 note on a standard-size keyboard. This note is below middle-C, two octaves … Read more
The previous post talked about what motivates us to do what we do. It addressed the concepts of collaborative motivation (primarily seeking to benefit others) and individual motivation (primarily seeking to benefit the self). There is, however, another source of motivation. It is the motivation born from the belief that each individual has a unique … Read more
There are generally two types of motivation for finding singular links: collaborative motivation and individual motivation. Collaborative motivation primarily seeks to benefit others; individual motivation primarily seeks to benefit the self. Collaborative is outward-facing; individual is inward-facing. Let’s unpack them both. Collaboration Collaborative motivation is a sharing process. In the same way that a teacher … Read more
Let’s dive deeper into the topic of emergent properties, which are the unique characteristics that result from connecting some underlying components. The high school student creates emergent properties by mixing vinegar and baking soda to simulate the frothing lava of a volcano science project, for instance. The frothy properties do not exist in either of … Read more
When you combine various elements to create singular links, the resulting unions exhibit emergent properties. These properties spring into existence from the interaction of the underlying components. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Or, the whole demonstrates properties that its parts do not. The components interact in such a way so … Read more
When you notice something that’s exciting, it creates energy in your brain and your body. Kids demonstrate this most vividly when excitement jolts through them and they leap in the air, clap and flap, shriek and squeal. Their excitement on the inside becomes excitement on the outside. Adults sometimes shine with excitement too. Think of … Read more
Inside your skull, your brain is floating in a silky goo. your brain resembles other brains. If someone were to scoop your brain out of your head and plop it on a counter, you wouldn’t be able to identify it from other brains on the counter. However, it is not exactly like any of the … Read more
A toddler, held in his mother’s arms, sees a puppy and points at it. “Puppy,” his mom says, training the boy to associate the word with the dog. “It’s a puppy.” The baby holds his gaze, transfixed, and keeps pointing. He points for a comically long time, for such a long time that he causes … Read more
Let’s unpack the concept of orthogonal influences that we introduced in a recent post. Everyone is familiar with the word diagonal, but the word orthogonal could use a little introduction. Diagonal describes a line that intersects one or more lines to form one or more angles, like the line that connects two opposite corners of … Read more
If we are going to pioneer original work, we have to be willing to reject conventional thinking and forge new mental paths on our own. Let’s unpack this by first exploring conventional thinking. One day, XYZ Corporation announces it has positive earnings and its stock price goes up. The news headline claims, “The stock price … Read more
There once was a man who was a merchant and father of a teenage daughter. Through a series of mishaps, he found himself unable to pay his debt to a money lender. The money lender proposed a bargain: he would pick up two stones from the stone path, a black one and a white one, … Read more
In our last post we discussed divergent thinking, which is the thought process used to generate many ideas related to a subject in a short amount of time. Quantity is key. The goal is to create as many ideas as possible, regardless of whether they are any good or not. Then, after we have created … Read more
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling A great tool for making links is divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a thought process used to generate many ideas related to a subject in a short amount of time. By exploring an anything-goes attitude to the subject, we … Read more
Our story begins three million years ago in patch of African lowlands where a monkey-like hominid named Lucy is scurrying away from her hominid companion. There were 3 signs that her companion was not having a good day. 1) the insects he ate for breakfast were upsetting his digestion, 2) an annoying splinter was still … Read more
Remember the story of Italian engineer and Nobel Prize winner G. Marconi, inventor of radio. As radio equipment began to get more powerful, he could transmit signals across greater distances. He thought that if he had strong enough equipment, he could beam signals across entire countries, possibly across continents and oceans. I’ll tell you ’bout … Read more
Have you gone out to play today? People need playtime. Especially adults. Especially serious adults. Especially serious adults who think they have no time for playtime. Whimsy (noun) – playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor; a whim; a thing that is fanciful or odd. Some people are apprehensive about playtime because it is not … Read more
The “Invisible Gorilla Test” was an experiment that showed participants a short video showing players in white shirts and players in black shirts dribbling a basketball and passing among them. The test asked participants to count how many times the players in white shirts passed a basketball. While most viewers managed to count the number … Read more
Last night the moon appeared as a tiny sliver. Above it was one bright star. Someone proclaimed the star was actually the planet Venus. My mind likened the crescent moon to a smiling mouth in the sky. Then I realized Venus was an eye. Venus and the moon together formed a face. The face of … Read more
It’s hard to look at something familiar and see it in a new way. But that is what we often must do when we work with the same material over and over again. Musicians use the same 12 notes. Artists use the same forms of composition. Painters use the same primary colors as the source … Read more
If our definition of a Singular Link is the union of unrelated elements resulting in something new, the epoch-making Link of our era has been COVID-19. Think about it. Over the course of about a year the virus went from something that affected zero people to something that affected 8 billion people. It influenced the … Read more
There are popular myths that claim some creative works manifest spontaneously in their final, completed form like stars falling from the sky. The Beatle Paul McCartney allegedly woke up one morning with the song Yesterday in his head, and that song went on to become the most recorded song in history. However, what gets lost … Read more
Sitting down and staring at the blank slate of a new project can be intimidating, and it can fill our minds with both excitement and dread. Where do we find the inspiration for our work? How do we identify the important elements to link together? Optimism and pessimism wrestle for control of our thoughts like … Read more
I love to fly. This is fortunate, I suppose, because I seem do it a lot. Perhaps I was a bird in a previous life. The most interesting part of airplane travel is the ascent from the ground up to the clouds. That’s the time when all the commonplace objects like trees and cars and … Read more
“How can individuals identify links among seemingly unrelated influences to make innovative new discoveries?” I asked that question to OpenAI/ChatGPT and, in about 30 seconds, I received this persuasive response… Identifying links among seemingly unrelated influences to make innovative new discoveries requires a combination of creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking. Here are a few steps … Read more
Imagine you open up a comic book and the first page shows a close up of a man’s smirking face. You have no context. Who is this man? Why is he smirking? “He seems pretty smug,” you may think. You turn the page to get more information about why he is smirking. The next page, … Read more
Where do you discover new ideas? How do you find inspiration? What gives you new perspectives? What is the flash that takes you from something routine and conventional to something rare and extraordinary? How do you learn to create? How do you place ourselves in situations where creativity flows through you? How do you create … Read more
Once you start noticing lucky links, when individuals stumble upon something that was completely unexpected, previously unimagined, and altogether novel, we begin to see how frequently they appeared in history. In fact, many recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics were just such individuals. The first Nobel Physics prize winner was German professor Wilhelm Röntgen … Read more
History is crowded with countless individuals who set out to find something but ended up finding a variation of what they were seeking. Columbus happened upon the Americas while looking for the Spice Islands of Asia. Edison discovered that bamboo was a more efficient material for the light-bulb filament than cotton. These discoveries were part … Read more
A singular link is the fusion of independent elements that together form something novel. One classic archetype of a singular link is the romantic couple. Two people unite to create the relationship, which is its very own entity: the couple-entity. The couple has two constituents (person A and person B) which together develop certain characteristics … Read more
“An amazing number of ideas that shape our 20th century lives came first as inspirations in dreams. Philo T Fransworth dreamed the basic idea for t.v. When he was still a kid in high school. Elias Howe invented the sewing machine while trying to escape from cannibals in his nightmare. Albert Einstein first figured out … Read more
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” This quote, attributed to Thomas Edison, emphasizes the importance of dedication, of commitment, of stick-to-itiveness. Those are fine qualities for a person to possess. But to me, the really interesting question is, Where does that one percent come from? What is the source of the idea? … Read more
SingularLinks is a site devoted to the creative fusion of independent elements. Here we explore the union of influences resulting in novel ideas, perspectives, transformations, innovations. This is where we dissect the anatomy of inspiration and savor the intoxicating aroma of ingenuity. BANG! Hello, and welcome.
