Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs

Kilduff has found that rivalries are often spurred by similarity. We tend to oppose people whom we can identify with, and rivalries thrive when people are closely matched. That’s because contests decided by small margins are likely to elicit counterfactual thoughts, like If things had gone slightly differently

Instead of feeling like you were in a relationship with the author, you’d suddenly feel like an outsider.

“There are always these poles between them,” Vernon Chatman said of Matt and Trey. “Everything is great when the power is running between the poles.”

“Laughter,” observed the psychologist Daniel Goleman, “may be the shortest distance between two brains.”

Power is to relationships what gravity is to matter.

The metaphor of the spotlight is apt. If you’ve ever stood in one, you know that the same light source that allows an audience to see you makes you blind to them.1

basic to human relations and the human psyche. Everyone, the psychologist Elaine Aron explains, has two primary relational impulses: to link, or find common ground, and to rank, or establish hierarchical positions.

“Creative individuals alternate order and disorder, simplicity and complexity, sanity and craziness in an ongoing process.”

The dyad is also the most fluid and flexible of relationships. Two people can basically make their own society on the go. When even one more person is added to the mix, the situation becomes more stable, but this stability may stifle creativity, as roles and power positions harden. Three legs make a table stand in place. Two legs are made for walki

The best climate for progress is a mix of deference and defiance. Corporate teams do well with a clear mission and a deviant who asks uncomfortable questions.