The Slow Hunch is the title of a chapter of Steven Johnson‘s book “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” (ISBN-10: 1594487715) and is a primary source of inspiration for the naming of Hunch Manifest Inc.

The Slow Hunch states, in essence, that breakthrough ideas almost never come in a sudden insight. The most important ideas take a long time to emerge from a dormant thought. At some point this hunch becomes accessible, perhaps after some collision of smaller related hunches, formning something bigger than themselves. As time passes and collisions ensue, the idea may incubate, and take the form of a hunch. The challenge of our time is to allow these hunches to come together in a systematic way.

Innovation in the 21st century has as its engine a new paradigm of connectivity, the networked masses are able to share and collaborate exponentially more. Therefore it follows that the opportunity for stumbling across new information which build and improve our ideas ensues. While some will argue we are overwhelmed with the information, a reflective mind will synthesize the information in a meaningful way. To quote Johnson, “Chance favours the connected mind”.

Mark van Berkel is Founder and President of Hunch Manifest Inc. While managing business operations he also leads the team in designing semantic technology to provide personalized online presence and reputation management services. Prior to forming the company, he was consultant in enterprise software projects to companies including Panasonic, Shell, and General Electric and was an Architect for a world leading human capital management software-as-a-service. Mark holds a Bachelor of Information Systems from StFX University and did his graduate studies at University of Toronto, getting a MEng Industrial Information Engineering and an MBA, Strategy and Innovation from the Rotman School of Management. In 2006 he published a 170 page report as a researcher at the Semantic Technologies Lab at the University of Toronto and built a semantic technology prototype for SAP Research Labs. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn or Twitter. Mark is also certified in Google Analytics.