Saved by sari and
The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius
This experience is common in the childhoods of people who go on to do great work, as I have written elsewhere. Nearly everyone who does great work has some episode of early solitary work. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell remarked, the development of gifted and creative individuals, such as Newton or Whitehead, seems to require a period in which ... See more
Cultivating a State of Mind Where New Ideas Are Born
In fact, most of these comrades who I gauged to be more brilliant than I have gone on to become distinguished mathematicians. Still, from the perspective of 30 or 35 years, I can state that their imprint upon the mathematics of our time has not been very profound. They’ve all done things, often beautiful things, in a context that was already set ou
... See moreCultivating a State of Mind Where New Ideas Are Born
The stories our culture tells about creativity almost always concern individuals: think Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Kanye West. These stories are tempting because they are simple, because they appeal to our veneration for individualism, because we love our heroes. We have very few models for storytelling that concern small groups of people, or ent... See more
Optimal creativity doesn’t happen in complete isolation. Breakthroughs almost always involve a collaborative component.