David Byrne - Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up David Byrne

A book about creative genius from the Talking Heads co-founder and author of How Music Works.

So many breakthroughs in arts or science were like this, lost on their initial audience and only later revived and acknowledged to be great.

This book asks, why do some ideas fall asleep? And how do they wake up?

We love to believe in a meritocracy of ideas - that greatness is always recognised, innovation always seized upon and rewarded. Yet so many of the people we now recognise as the world's great creators initially got little traction for their work. It was only later, often much later, that their work comes roaring back to life and made a lasting impact.

Discoveries as diverse as dark matter to continental drift, technologies from solar panels to the steam...

Sleeping Beauties is a master class in how not to be blind to the next great thing. But more important even than why ideas go dormant is why they reawaken. Again and again, Byrne shows, someone from a different discipline breaks into the silo. Frequently it’s someone open to metaphorical thinking, to the counterintuitive. Hierarchies and taxonomies have their place, but they can reward insiders and punish outsiders. Oftentimes, it is the winds of change that blow away the sand that has buried momentous ideas.