This work offers a summary of the book “GROUP GENIUS: The Creative Power of Collaboration” by Keith Sawyer.Collaboration is the real secret to breakthrough creativity – not a lone genius having an “Aha!” flash of inspiration. As Keith Sawyer explains in Group Genius, genuinely new ideas are never the brainchild of a single person. Instead, they emerge bottom up from the creative efforts of a large number of people, each of whom nudge the idea forward or add a little twist here or there. What finally comes out the other end of the creative process is an idea which cannot truthfully be said to be the exclusive result of any one person’s thinking. Instead, all kinds of different people have added a little bit here and deleted what doesn’t work over there.
From an organizational perspective, if you want to generate more earth-shattering innovations, make it possible and feasible for everyone to collaborate on developing new ideas. According to the author, that’s the only way you can fully utilize the combined brain power of your people to best effect.
This remarkable book provides a good roadmap for companies that want to infuse more creativity throughout their organization.