finite game is played for the purpose of winning,” Carse wrote, “an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

Roughly 45 percent of new pairs met through mutual friends, and another 41 percent of new pairs met through mutual friends and shared contexts (like classes). The formation of new ties varied with network distance, meaning that individuals who were separated by two intermediaries (that is, they shared neither friends nor classes) were thirty times

“Creative individuals alternate order and disorder, simplicity and complexity, sanity and craziness in an ongoing process.”

John didn’t insult reporters while Paul charmed them. John could insult reporters because Paul charmed them.

One study for the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at the two reasons venture capitalists choose partners: for their ability or for their affinity, such as a shared ethnic background or having worked at the same firm. Similarities of ability enhanced performance, but similarities of affinity “dramatically reduces the probability of

Magnet places exude a power even for people who come without any concrete ambition.

Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From advances what we could call a network theory of human achievement, one that has its best metaphor in ecology, the constant interdependence of many unseen forces that “compulsively connect and remix that most valuable of resources: information.”

identical twins from opposite ends of the globe.

In social science, assuming that an individual’s behavior is due to internal factors rather than external ones is called the fundamental attribution error. When it comes to appreciating creativity, this error can be toxic, because it leads us to ignore how profoundly people depend on others, not just for help in discrete situations but to shape