"Places where creative people meet and exchange ideas"
“Yet, the truth is that innovation is a messy business. It’s full of blind alleys and half-baked ideas, random collisions and abrupt changes in direction. Ideas mix and recombine, fail, reemerge and, in the end, a precious few become wildly successful.
“Innovation, most of all, is driven by collaboration. So it takes more than just smart people, but diversity as well. Different people, working on different things, colliding together in unexpected ways is what brings about important new ideas. That’s why, more than anything else, vibrant cities are crucial to our continued ability to innovate and compete.”
Why Cities Are Our Most Important Innovation Platform : Greg Satell, 9 November 2013, Forbes
Money quote:
“As Steve Jobs noted, creativity is about connecting things. The more random collisions you have with people who have different ideas, the more creative you’ll be. That’s why he designed Apple’s new headquarters to facilitate interactions, with lots of open spaces and common areas. It’s also why cities need more than office buildings and research parks. They need cafes, music festivals, art shows and other places where creative people meet and exchange ideas.“
emphasis mine.
