The next time your employer touts the creative, and almost mystical, quality of the collaborative, as you are assigned yet to another group project, you might want to become a name dropper. There is a prevailing view amongst employers and even churches today that anything derived from ‘group think’ is superior to what individuals can produce. That is not, however, what is born out by the facts. Some of the best intellectual property produced results from solitary deliberation. Case in point: one Albert Einstein.
Einstein was “convinced that great discoveries come out of solitary effort,” and that while alone with our thoughts we are better able to purify them in order to grasp the reality of things.1 This does not mean that Einstein was an isolationist. He kept up extensive communications with a verity of people and drew on their insights.2 Being singularly competent, though, is not to say that conferences will never due.
A contemporary genius to Einstein (though several years younger) was J. Robert Oppenheimer who is said to have functioned best in a collaborative environment. But Oppenheimer, like Einstein, brought his genius to the table with him. He was capable of deliberating before hand, and then guiding the discovery process with other highly intelligent colleagues. Furthermore, these types of collaborations have both the authority to produce and implement the products they work on, and receive compensation accordingly. Most of what passes for collaborative work in companies today is actually work being done on the group members, and not by them.
Notes:
1-2. Eric Ormsby, “Geniuses and the Men Hidden Inside Them,” review of Einstein & Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius,by Silvan Schweber (May 2008): New York Sun, May 21, 2008. http://www.nysun.com/arts/geniuses-and-the-men-hidden-inside-them/76795/
