Innovation/Global Risk

Fight Groupthink – Demand Space & Time – or Chats

By Shlomo Maital  

 

  Steve Wozniak 

 

Writing in the Global New York Times, Jan. 13, Susan Cain observes that “Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.”  Wow, amazing.  But she does have a serious point:

   “…the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.”

  For innovators, this can be a huge problem, especially within large organizations. Much R&D is done in teams, with hierarchical organizations.  Truly creative people, introverted ones, often don’t function well in such environments. 

   But as with all issues related to creativity, there are no hard and fast rules. Cain herself, in a recent book, gives Jobs partner Steve Wozniak some well-deserved credit:

   “Before Mr. Wozniak started Apple, he designed calculators at Hewlett-Packard, a job he loved partly because HP made it easy to chat with his colleagues. Every day at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., management wheeled in doughnuts and coffee, and people could socialize and swap ideas. What distinguished these interactions was how low-key they were. For Mr. Wozniak, collaboration meant the ability to share a doughnut and a brainwave with his laid-back, poorly dressed colleagues — who minded not a whit when he disappeared into his cubicle to get the real work done.”

  Steve Jobs was a loner. Steve Wozniak was a collaborator and socializer. Both were exceedingly creative. 

   The message here is: Innovator, who are you really?  Need solitude?  Create it. Need socializing?  Find it.  Find your own unique creative style, and create your environment to optimize it.