One, Two - That’s Creativity for You

One of things I like about the precious two weeks most of us reserve for our summer holiday it that it gives me some time to be alone.

Being no diva-esque Greta Garbo in my search for solitude, I do this best by climbing up and down Greek mountains on a bicycle or by being out in the Mediterranean hanging off a catamaran.  Occasionally, it’s just lying about catching up on a few books for which my normally frenetic schedule and atomised time doesn’t allow.

The myth of the lone genius

In between the sweaty and scary moments that some of these pastimes provide, solitude, whether physical or mental, gives me time to think.  It helps develop some perspective, and come up with new approaches to problems and ways to develop businesses or people.

The reality, though, is that many of the better ideas I’ve been associated with and, certainly their implementation, have ultimately been group efforts. But the best have been a result of a series of partnership with people with complementary skills and personalities I’ve enjoyed over the decades.

This may be one reason why I don’t hold with the cultural concept of the` lone genius` whether they be Edison, Einstein and Faraday or Jobs, Zuckerberg and Welch.  Many are extremely driven and have ruthlessly planned self-deification convinced of their own uniqueness, others had it thrust upon them by outside interests.

Attractive though the idea of the entrepreneurial hero may be, I’ve long held the view that alongside the most effective CEOs is a great COO; that the most successful start-ups combine at least a sales and technical skills leader from the outset whilst great communications campaigns come out of pairings of the visually and verbally literate. The need to sustain and evolve creativity is why even the most successful artists have muses.

Creativity is a social process

To be clear, I’m certain, then, that creativity of all sorts is the key to consistently generating innovation and is the social process which underpins successful entrepreneurial leadership.  This issue lies at the heart of Joshua Wolf Shenk's new book, ` Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs`.  In this tome, which draws on sources including academic research and historical evidence, he explores what makes creative partnerships work, those where people can be `as alike as identical twins and as unalike as complete strangers. `

Shenk believes that in successful pairs lies a special combination of similarity and mutual interests alongside differences.  Creativity, he argues, is driven by `encountering difference`. But this seems to work best when only two players are involved.  Crucially, it's a social unit but it's also very flexible. Two people can take and switch roles, forming a balance that is also part of optimising the creative process.  

Effective partnerships are rarely symmetrical, with both people in the same role, even if, like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin they have the same title. For instance, it can commonly be the role of one partner to be the public face of the company, whilst the other maintains a lower profile.

This can be for more than pragmatic reasons of skill or time availability.  It may be that the `face` gets their ego gratified by public attention, and that need  not be destructive so long as they respect the other person’s contribution.  It may also be that the more recessive personality has to realise their interests too are being met by the more extroverted skills of their partner.

Fight

But such issues may be difficult to navigate and any student of business history knows that entrepreneurship is full of tales of co-founders fighting, especially if their enterprise proves successful. This can start as soon as a third person enters joins the firm. The culture then starts typically to become less dynamic and more structured at the expense of rapid, informal and often intuitive communication.

Also, as anyone that’s been in a start-up will attest, when you're struggling to break through, you're all in it together and it's fun. There is a common enemy - failure.  In the presence of a common enemy focuses the mind and the surrendering of individual ownership, either metaphorically or literally is easier because there is not so much at stake.

Of course, creative pairs exist in a context, and when you look at those that survive and continue to be creative together, what surrounds them becomes a really critical part of the story. Shenk points out that, often, creative partnerships have a stable team of co-workers who've been with them for decades. Each in the pair has the freedom to play to their strengths because they're being supported consistently by a group that understand how it benefits them and have evolved mechanisms that make the most of any situation.

Trust, faith and belief

But ultimately great creative partnerships are built on trust.  You have to be confident that your partner is going to do what they say they're going to do, and that's something that’s developed over time.  Eventually trust evolves into faith, where you really believe in someone. 

But as I like to think my holiday schedule demonstrates, creative partnerships are not at odds with solitude.  A lot of people need to have time alone to give their best to another.  And that’s something  every partnership needs to work out.