“Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
~Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Poetry is making the private world public
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”
~Allen Ginsberg
If you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs
“Look, I don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you’re not alive.”
~Mel Brooks
Creativity in solitude or collaboration?
This is a fundamental question we face in our daily naming work, and, we think, is a central issue for most companies. How do you nurture the most creative environment: creative isolation or collaborating in teams? We have found in our work that a balance or interplay of these two strategies consistently yields the most interesting results. If the balance swings too much toward individual creative isolation, great work may be created but might reach a dead end, or lead to missed opportunities or a disconnect with project goals. On the other hand, if there is too much emphasis on collaboration, ideas may wither, become recycled, or lack the depth that sustained introspective exploration can bring.
Writing in the New York Times last year (The Rise of the New Groupthink), Susan Cain made a passionate case for introverts and the power of solitude in creative endeavors:
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
Cain goes on to extol the virtues of the often unheralded work performed by creative isolationists by citing the well known example of Apple’s two founding fathers:
Culturally, we’re often so dazzled by charisma that we overlook the quiet part of the creative process. Consider Apple. In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, we’ve seen a profusion of myths about the company’s success. Most focus on Mr. Jobs’s supernatural magnetism and tend to ignore the other crucial figure in Apple’s creation: a kindly, introverted engineering wizard, Steve Wozniak, who toiled alone on a beloved invention, the personal computer.
Cain’s polemic, as might be expected, unleashed a backlash from proponents of collaboration in letters to the Times (The Key to Creativity: Solitude or Teams?), which make some persuasive counter-arguments. Keith Sawyer writes of scientific and educational research into the value of collaboration,
Decades of scientific research have revealed that great creativity is almost always based in collaboration, conversation and social networks — just the opposite of our mythical image of the isolated genius. And educational research has found that deeper learning results when students participate in thoughtful argumentation and discuss reasons and concepts.
Ed Donovan writes that Cain makes a mistake by conflating true collaboration with “groupthink”:
The collaborative process may benefit from the input of individuals who are creative high achievers, but it’s not dependent on them; what’s required are the actual stakeholders whose concerns are threatened by a conflict or a problem. Collaboration is at a far end of the problem-solving spectrum from mind-numbing, creativity-suppressing groupthink.
And Stephen Bertman refers to earlier civilizations as models of creative collaboration:
The creative balance that Susan Cain seeks between individual and group thinking was sought (and found) almost 25 centuries ago by the ancient Greeks. Treasuring personal introspection, they nurtured the life of the individual human mind that gave birth to the rational quest for truth known as philosophy. But, as the symposiums presided over by Socrates show, the Greeks also recognized the synergistic power of multiple minds working together toward a common goal.
Later, the Library of Alexandria became the world’s first think tank as inventive scientists gathered and inspired one another to produce mechanical marvels as dazzling in their own way as the electronic wonders of today.
In the dynamic tension between the individual and the group, the Greeks found the intellectual engine that powered their civilization — and can power ours, if we choose to use it.
On the other hand, some very influential artists and thinkers have been exemplars of the creative isolation approach, showing that Sawyer’s “mythical image of the isolated genius” is not quite so mythical, as the following four quotes attest:
“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”
~Rollo May (1909–1994), American existential psychologist.“You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
~Franz Kafka (1883–1924), German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.”
~Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, and one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century.“The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
~Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
We have found that creative isolation can lead to some of the best invention, but creative collaboration is necessary to turn invention into action and execution. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs would probably both have had amazing careers as individuals, but Apple could only have been born from the synergistic fusion of their two unique talents and visions. And Tesla may have been the greater genius, but Thomas Edison was more socially adept and able to bring his ideas to a larger audience.
What do you think, and what works best for you company? Use the comments below or in a social media conversation to chime in with your stories of isolation vs. collaboration in a creative environment.
All great artists and thinkers are great workers, adept at rejecting, sifting, transforming and ordering
“Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration…shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…. All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche
Debunking Henry Ford’s “faster horse” quote

Henry Ford’s most famous quote is often used to bolster the argument that innovation cannot be focus-grouped:
It’s a wonderful quote. But unfortunately, there’s no evidence that Henry Ford actually uttered those famous words. Patrick Vlaskovits, in a great Harvard Business Review blog post — Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote — does the due diligence to track down the source of this quote and determine its veracity, which he was unable to do. He also offers a brilliant lesson for innovators and entrepreneurs in finding the right balance between not allowing yourself to be dictated to by the potentially unthinking masses, and ignoring your customers completely. Vlaskovits advocates “continually testing your vision against reality,” something Mr. Ford failed to do.
Back to that photograph up top, that’s Henry Ford himself on the left, in is first and only automobile race, against Alexender Winton, in 1901. Here’s what the label says, and what’s written on the back of the photo:
Printed on photograph: “By W.D. Benham, Detroit, 1918.”Label on front: “Ten Mile Race between Henry Ford (in No.4) and Alexander Winton at Old Blue Ribbon Race Track, East Jefferson Avenue opposite present site of Hudson Motor Car Company. October 10th 1901. Time 13 minutes, 23 4/5 seconds, 45.33 miles per hour. Ford won. Lee Cuson, mechanic. 999 built 2 years later.” Handwritten on back: “Henry Ford, Alexander Winton, 10 Mile Race, Gr. Pointe Track, Ford won in 13-23 4/5, Oct. 10, 1901. For full details see evening papers of above date or morning papers of Oct. 11, 1901.” [Source: Detroit Yes!]
For Ford, wining this race “won him $1,000 and a cut glass bowl that he kept in his home as a trophy. Upon Ford’s death in 1947 the bowl was inadvertently shipped out and sold. When knowledgeable officials realized the tragic error, they successfully tried to track it down, but it was lost forever.” [Source: Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame]
A “tragic error” indeed. Who knows if somebody out there will drink holiday punch this season from a bowl that ‘Ol Henry Ford won in his first car race in 1901. He never raced again. Apparently, he found the experience of traveling that fast “terrifying.”
The Henry Ford Museum has a richly detailed history of this race and the car Ford build for it, which he named Sweepstakes: 1901 Ford Sweepstakes – The Race Car That Changed Everything.
To create is divine, to reproduce is human
“An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an original is motivated be necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.”
~Man Ray
Poetry is the bridge between the language of the universe and the universe of language
“Translation is an art of analogy, the art of finding correspondences. An art of shadows and echoes… Baudelaire said poetry is essentially analogy. The idea of universal correspondence comes from the idea that language is a microcosmos, a double of the universe. Between the language of the universe and the universe of language, there is a bridge, a link: poetry. The poet, says Baudelaire, is the translator.”
~Octavio Paz
The Three Stages of Truth
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer