Fertile soils for innovative ideas

We got into this discussion about innovation. How can innovation happen. There are lots of researches, theories and writings about this. I have my own version.

I believe that innovation can not happen from nowhere. Creativity s not a telnet given when one is born. It's a 'recomposition' process. Whether one can be successful in this depends on two things, one is how many 'components' exist in the external world; the other is the components exist in the 'internal' world.

If one is given a piece of white paper, what he can do with this paper is less then when he is given a piece of white paper and a pen. This is what I called external components. The internal component are about what he has stored in his brain. The more components stored in his brain (such as shapes, stories, processes.. ), the more he might be able to construct from one piece of paper and one pen.

However the abundance of internal components doesn't guarantee the success of innovation. They are only seeds in different jars. The only way they can grow into a diverse forest is to have fertile soils and open space. Below picture is how I imagine this fertile ground, a place where different elements can interchange, interact, collide and hybrid.