If the Shoe Fits: the Power of Working Alone
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
More and more research is showing that real creativity is a more solo function than a team effort.
Susan Cain spells this out in a thoughtful LinkedIn post that is well worth your time, especially if you are a young founder raised on social media, with a penchant for crowdsourcing and Yelp.
Consider the words of Steve Wozniak in his memoir iWoz.
Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Then read, digest and tweak Cain’s ideas to fit your situation, then put the concepts to work in your company.
Image credit: HikingArtist