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Although the video below is intended to be a commercial for author Steven Johnson's latest book, it would also be a good standalone three-and-a-half-minute podcast clip on innovation. Johnson's just-released The Innovator's Cookbook is a selection of essays on innovation across a diversity of fields, touching on everything from Brian Eno's instrument swaps to IDEO's storied show-and-tell sessions.

The Cookbook also contains reports from Google, Twitter, The Rise of the Creative Class author Richard Florida, the late "social ecologist" Peter Drucker, MIT researcher Eric Von Hippel, and a host of other influential thinkers.

Need more convincing? This week and next, Johnson will be posting his favorite excerpts from the book on his website.