When most people thing about creativity, they envision teams,
Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
The list goes on.
However, in 1975, Steve Wozniak spent most days and
nights working alone in his basement.
After three months, Woz emerged with his creation, a user-friendly home computer.
Only then did Woz show his computer invention to his friend, Steve Jobs.
Woz wanted to give his invention away for no charge, but
Jobs pleaded with Woz to start a company called Apple Computer.
In Wozniak's own memoir,
he gives sage advice to the next generation of innovators.
Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me, they live inside their heads.
They're almost like artists.
In fact, the very best of them are artists.
And artists work the best alone.
I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take.
That advice is, work alone.
Not on a committee.
Not on a team.
Who is more creative, individuals or teams?
When I've asked this question to companies and
leaders, nearly everyone votes for the team.
As it turns out, there's over 50 years of research bearing on this question,
and without exception the evidence is that individuals are more creative than teams.
Before you reject this research finding or turn off this MOOC, please hear me out.
Let's look at a meta-analysis conducted by Diehl & Stroebe
that compared individuals with groups.
They randomly assigned people to real groups,
such as you might find in any company or organization, and had them brainstorm.
They compared these real groups to control groups,
who did the same brainstorming exercise but worked alone.
Diehl & Strobe call these control groups or nominal groups.
They evaluated the productivity of the real groups and
the nominal groups in terms of quantity and quality as judged by
independent experts who don't know whose ideas they were evaluating.
Are you ready for the results?
The nominal groups generated about two and
a half times more ideas than the real groups, and a significantly
greater percentage of their ideas were judged to be of high quality.
This effect has been replicated hundreds of times.
The question is why.
There are four factors that lead groups to be less creative than individuals.
Number one, social loafing or free-riding.
This is the tendency for a minority of people to do a majority of
the team's work while some people don't contribute to the group.
Note, social loafing becomes more of a problem as the team gets larger.
Two, conformity.
This often occurs without conscious awareness when people bring their behavior
in line with what they feel will win them acceptance in a group.
Over time, members grow more similar to one another, homogeneity effect.
Three, production blocking.
This refers to anything that interferes with a person's ability to fully
focus on the work.
This includes having to listen to other people and be polite.
It also includes having to take notes.
Did you know that at Mattel Media no one takes notes?
They have stenographers for that job.
Four, performance matching.
This refers to the fact that people in groups
quickly converge on a group average.
And the lowest performing members are particularly influential.
We call this downward norm-setting.
Look, I realize all of this is depressing, but
I don’t want you to disassemble your team.
We need teams.
As leaders, I want you to take charge of
your creative team by introducing
hybrid strategies and techniques.
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