The Quirky Secrets of the World’s Greatest Innovators
In her book
on inventive genius, Melissa Schilling delves into the personality traits that
lead to breakthroughs.
Quirky:
The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough
Innovators Who Changed the World
by Melissa A. Schilling, PublicAffairs, 2018
In Quirky, NYU Stern professor Melissa Schilling embraces what you
might call the “great person” view of innovation. Many recent studies of
innovation have focused on the importance of collaboration and social setting,
and emphasized the ways in which good ideas are typically the product of many
minds, rather than one. Schilling looks instead at eight individuals whom she
calls “serial breakthrough innovators”: Benjamin Franklin, Marie Curie, Nikola
Tesla, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Dean Kamen, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.
The
approach Schilling takes with Quirky is a variant of the case
study method — instead of companies, the cases here are the lives of great
inventors. She examines their lives to uncover the common personality traits
and “foibles” that helped them see what others did not. Schilling argues that
serial breakthrough innovators are different from the rest of us because
they’re able to come up with groundbreaking innovations over and over again,
rather than just once. And their innovations represent dramatic leaps, rather
than incremental improvements.
Schilling has a nice eye for the telling
detail, and shares the stories of these well-known innovators’ lives with
economy and precision. In some ways Schilling’s study conforms squarely to our
assumptions about what creative geniuses are like. Great innovators, she
argues, tend to be obsessive workers who sleep very little and are willing to
sacrifice almost everything to the pursuit of their goals. They’re able to do
so in part because they have an unrelenting drive for achievement and because they
derive tremendous pleasure from work, which offers them that feeling Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi famously called “flow.”
Innovators also have exceptional working
memory, and the ability to hold many concepts in their mind at once. This
allows them to “search longer paths through the network of associations in
their mind,” increasing the chances they’ll make interesting and
unexpected connections between ideas. Schilling also suggests that there may be
something concrete about the cultural association between genius and madness.
Pointing to the experience of Tesla, who had an extraordinary sensitivity to
outside stimuli and would routinely go for long stretches on almost no sleep,
she argues that most great innovators have at least a touch of mania.
Innovators are also typically blessed (or
cursed) with a deep sense of what psychologists call self-efficacy, which is a
nice word for what, in other contexts, might be called hubris: the misplaced
confidence in one's ability to accomplish whatever one sets one’s mind to.
This is crucial because the very nature of breakthrough innovations means that
most people will be skeptical of their value. Indeed, most of the people
Schilling writes about were, in one sense or another, outsiders in the fields
they helped revolutionize. They were also idealists, convinced that they could
change the world. As Schilling puts it, “They are willing to pursue an idea
even when everybody else says it’s crazy precisely because they don’t need the
affirmation of others — they believe they are right even if you don’t agree.”
It was that sense of self-efficacy that allowed Elon Musk to believe he could
become the first civilian to put rockets into space, and that allowed Dean
Kamen to build a wheelchair that could climb stairs, even though everyone told
him it was impossible.
Part of that willingness to ignore the
judgment of others also seems to proceed from what Schilling calls the “marked
sense of ‘separateness’” that most of her subjects have felt, which was
manifested as “a lack of interest in social interaction, a rejection of rules
and norms, and often isolation even from family members.” This makes it
difficult for innovators to have rich social lives, but also makes it easier
for them to think for themselves.
Much
of this model seems intuitively correct. But Schilling’s sample size is so
small that it’s hard to know if the conclusions she draws from that sample
about the nature of serial innovation would hold up to closer scrutiny. And
even within her group of eight, not everyone fits the model. Benjamin Franklin,
for instance, had a rich social life and cultivated a large network of friends,
but was also an undeniably brilliant innovator. The same was true of Leonardo da
Vinci. Einstein made sure to get 10 hours of sleep
a night. Thomas Edison, as Schilling says, was resolutely un-idealistic,
insisting on commercializing everything he could.
So what are organizations and leaders
supposed to do with this information? It seems pretty clear that the kinds of
innovators Schilling is writing about are more born than made: Most of them
seem to have had “quirky” traits since childhood. And although the qualities
she describes may be necessary for breakthrough innovation, they alone are not
sufficient. Silicon Valley, after all, is full of socially awkward, would-be
idealists who work obsessively long hours and are convinced they’re right and
everyone else is wrong. But it has produced only one Steve Jobs.
In fact, the real paradox of Schilling’s work
is that even though it looks at completely extraordinary people, it may be most
valuable for what it tells us about how organizations can harness the
innovative power of ordinary people. Understanding the characteristics that enabled
Einstein to come up with ideas that others couldn’t might help organizations do
the same. Encouraging a diversity of cognitive and social styles, and allowing
employees to maintain a measure of distance from one another, rather than
insisting on constant connection, will facilitate independent thinking. Letting
people come up with ideas and solutions on their own, and then aggregating
those ideas, is more likely to yield interesting answers than brainstorming in
groups. Casting a wide net when looking for ideas, rather than talking only to
specialists in a field, amplifies the possibilities for unusual approaches.
Finding a way to imbue employees with a real sense of purpose can also be
valuable. An organization doesn’t need to find a breakthrough innovator if it
can make itself the innovator instead.
by James Surowiecki
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-Quirky-Secrets-of-the-Worlds-Greatest-Innovators?gko=ef650&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20180410&utm_campaign=resp
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