No More Teams: Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration

Each one of us is born into the world with different talents and skills. Most of us spend a lifetime trying to hone and develop these native born talents to maximize both our own potential and our contribution to the greater social good. But rarely can anybody these days maximize his or her talents working cloistered and alone. In this world of increasing specialization and complexity, rare indeed is the individual who achieves great success working independently on his or her own. Long ignored and overlooked, the wonders of collaborative creativity are just beginning to be understood and appreciated. In an important and revealing new book, Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration, syndicated columnist Michael Schrage examines both the nature of the collaborative process and methods of "fanning the collaborative flame." With frequent reference to legendary creative collaborative teams of the past (Orville and Wilbur Wright, Watson and Crick, Jobs and Wozniak, Lennon and McArtney), Schrage articulates truths that well deserve to be lifted to the forefront of our consciousness. How This Book Came to be Written Initially Shared Minds was to be a book about business meetings, and how new technologies can help streamline business meetings. But the author soon realized that the most interesting group work doesn't occur in large business meetings, but in small, energetic teams. So instead of writing a book about business meetings, he decided to closely examine the nature of creative "small group" collaborations. After interviewing many famous scientific and artistic "collaborative teams," Schrage spent a year as a visiting scholar at MIT's Media Lab synthesizing the ideas in this book. The Personal Attributes of Successful Collaborative Teams One of the probing questions examined in this book is: "What personal attributes contribute to successful collaborative joint ventures?" How is it that the family team of Orville and Wilbur Wright worked so well together, when other sibling pairs find it a struggle to order pizza together? And what role did Orville and Wilbur's parents play in fostering their creativity and perseverance. (Apparently Orville and Wilbur's mother played a decisive role in showing her sons the methodology of creative invention.) Along the same lines of thought, what personal qualities allowed Watson and Crick to work together to formulate their landmark three-dimensional model of DNA? True, they had differing and complementary scientific backgrounds. But more than that, they both had a hunger to understand the physical structure of DNA. That intellectual hunger united them in a focused scientific quest. Speaking on the subject of collaboration, Crick, in his memoirs, sheds light on the nature of his successful teaming with Watson: "Our...advantage was that we had evolved an unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration....If either of us suggested a new idea, the other, while taking i