Sublime

As Dr. Teresa Amabile wrote in her book The Progress Principle, “In light of our results, managers who say—or secretly believe—that employees work better under pressure, uncertainty, unhappiness, or fear are just plain wrong. Negative inner work life has a negative effect on the four dimensions of performance: people are less creative, less product

1. Greatness starts with superb people.

This is one of the paradoxes of creative collaboration. Great Groups are made up of people with rare gifts working together as equals. Yet, in virtually every one there is one person who acts as maestro, organizing the genius of the others. He or she is a pragmatic dreamer, a person with an original but attainable vision. Ironically, the leader is

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile concurs. After examining 12,000 daily diary entries by several hundred workers, she found that the single largest motivator was making progress in meaningful work.

Members of Great Groups also need relative autonomy, a sine qua non of creativity. No Great Group was ever micromanaged.

In real life, creativity doesn't usually happen while you're sitting alone at a desk. In fact, distractions and working with other people are critical ingredients.

The scientists could move from one project to another, which meant, member Chuck Thacker recalled, the best projects attracted the best people and “as a result, quality work flourished, less interesting work tended to wither.”