Sorrel Salb

Patrons of The Eagle and Child wrote three of the five best-selling fantasy series ofall-timewithin an eighteen year period - The Lord of the Rings , The Hobbit , and The Chronicles of Narnia . It is here, on Tuesday mornings, that C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other members ofThe Inklingsof Oxford met to read, discuss, and critique each other

To understand how historical ingredients apply to today’s communities and micro-scenia, I sought out potential emergent scenia from the present day.  

I found them in theInterIntellectandWrite of Passage. Both Anna Gát’s InterIntellect and David Perell’s Write of Passage are transitioning from communities to micro-scenia, and each has the

Although many have tried many times, it is not really possible to command scenius into being... The best you can do is NOT KILL IT. When it pops up, don’t crush it. When it starts rolling, don’t formalize it. When it sparks, fan it. But don’t move the scenius to better quarters. Try to keep accountants and architects and police and do-gooders away

Brian Eno (musician and producer) calls this a “scenius “ .

“Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals — artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers — who make up an “ecology of talent.”

When looking back at History there are dozens and dozens of stories about specific time periods where an uncanny number of creative spirits gathered within the same school, street, building, found each other and imagined on a much larger scale that they could have alone.

There is no one leader but rather mutual influences, respect, and possibly appr

Network effects of success : Silicon Valley is famous for its “mafias.” As companies sell or IPO for billions of dollars, they make many of their employees very wealthy. Those employees form new companies, support each other, and invest in the next generation of companies. ThePayPal Mafia, Silicon Valley’s most famous, includes entrepreneurs who w

Even with a catastrophic catalyzing event, just the right amount of internal and external competition, and a place in which to collaborate, scenius will not take root without a diverse group of people who are willing to offer differing thoughts and experiences. It’s at their intersection that new ideas form. Scenius is a remix, a riff off of what h

In 1997, historian David Banks argued in “The Problem of Excess Genius” that, “The most important question we can ask of historians is ‘Why are some periods and places so astonishingly more productive than the rest?’"