It Takes Two to (Create the) Tango
By Shlomo Maital
Not only does it take two to tango — it probably takes two to INVENT the tango. Tango probably comes from the Latin tangere, to touch, and it is a wonderful dance that was invented along the Rio del Plate, on the border between Uruguay and Argentina – and spread from there to the world.
Writing in the Global New York Times today (July 21), Joshua Wolf Shenk summarizes his forthcoming book Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs. His main point: The idea of a lone-wolf genius inventing breakthrough things is untrue. Usually great breakthroughs take two people.
He brings many examples: Lennon and McCartney; (I would add, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, the wonderful song writing team); Freud and his colleague Dr. Wilhelm Fliess; Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy; Picasso and Georges Braque; Picasso and his fierce adversary Henri Matisse (sometimes, creativity emerges not from collaboration but from competition); Einstein and his friend Michele Besso, with whom he walked through the Swiss mountains and discussed his ideas.
“Two people are the root of social experience – and of creative work,” Shenk argues. Why two? “We’re likely set up to interact with a single person more openly and deeply than with any group.”
I strongly believe this is true. When I embarked on writing a book on creativity (soon available as Cracking the Creativity Code), I felt it would be unbalanced, if I wrote it solo, as I had mainly an academic background. So I sought out my former student and current friend, Arie Ruttenberg, whose legendary creativity built a powerful ad agency. It was a wonderful collaboration, and our book was far better than if either of us had written it alone. By the way, we chose to preserve our individual ‘voices’ in the book, and hence identify the author of each chapter.
“The core experience of … one entity helping to inspire another is almost always true,” Shenk notes. I agree. So – if you seek ideas, if you have ideas, find a great partner. Preferably, someone very different from you. You’ll see – it will greatly enrich your creative productivity.
TIMnovate 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
July 21, 2014 at 10:37 pm
Kevin Dye
In the 1970’s I found myself reading a lot about the psychology of genius and literature in the so-called “great man” theory of innovation. It seemed to emerge from the 1930’s on. Later I came to see it as a continuation of the ‘individualism” motif of Americans. Then in the 1980’s, as I engaged the Japanese-catalyzed Total Quality Management movement, and focus on work in groups, I threw my faith into collaborative modes of engagement. I even worked on advancing the field of collaborative methods. Perhaps the search for creativity in individual genius and the genius locii of the collective are both mythologies or ideal types. Powers of Two seems a refreshing new look. Perhaps it is even an archetype of an innovative process. But, it may also be a component of both individual and collective modes. Internal dialogue – the dialogic mode, and collective dialogue – the deliberative mode – may both find a model in the Power of Two engaged in dialectic.
June 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Sartenada
In Finland, we have yet today Tango Festivals every summer.