Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

Headed by thirty-three-year-old Johnson, that original Lockheed Skonk Works set out to design the first U.S. jet fighter in 180 days. Working furiously against its deadline, the group managed to produce a prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star with 37 days to spare. World War II ended before the plane could be produced in large numbers, but the P-80 w

Many Great Groups have a dual administration. They have a visionary leader, and they have someone who protects them from the outside world, the “suits.”

most talented people have little incentive to defer to an individual without a strong moral core. Genius, even simple excellence, multiplies personal options. Why follow someone you can’t trust or who makes you feel soiled?

“As We May Think,” published in the Atlantic Monthly

People in Great Groups have blinders on.

Many projects never transcend mediocrity because their leaders suffer from the Hollywood syndrome. This is the arrogant and misguided belief that power is more important than talent. It is the too common view that everyone should be so grateful for a role in a picture or any other job that he or she should be willing to do whatever is asked, even i

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should :hey be. Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.

we decided to focus on seven that have had enduring impact. They are the Walt Disney studio, which invented the animated feature film in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; the Great Groups at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and Apple, which first made computers easy to use and accessible to nonexperts; the 1992 Clinton campaign, wh

participants in Great Groups create a culture of their own—with distinctive customs, dress, jokes, even a private language. They find their own names for the things that are important to them, a language that both binds them together and keeps nonmembers out. Such groups tend to treasure their secrets.