Mike Carruthers

There's a link to that book, and I'm also going to put a link to her Instagram account where she has lots of really great videos.

And she's got, I think, like two and a half million followers or something.

It's really good stuff.

And there'll be a link to that as well.

Thank you, Dana.

When you think about innovation, you probably imagine some lone genius having a sudden eureka moment.

But that's almost never how great ideas actually happen.

Breakthroughs rarely come from locking yourself in a room and just trying harder.

And they're almost never completely new ideas.

Most great ideas are built from existing ones, mixed, tweaked, borrowed, and sometimes stumbled into by accident.

Luck plays a bigger role in innovation than most people want to admit, and timing matters.

And progress usually happens in small, hidden steps that only look obvious in hindsight.

So how does the process really work, and why do we keep getting the story of innovation wrong?

That's what we're digging into with George Newman.

He's an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management, a leading expert on creativity, and his research has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

He's also the author of a book called How Great Ideas Happen, The Hidden Steps Behind Breakthrough Success.

Hey, George, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hi, Mike.

Thanks so much for having me.

Well, this is something I think everyone is interested in because who hasn't come up with a great idea?