Link Concepts

In the fall of 2011, I was standing in the middle of 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 overfilled trash … 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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