Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration [Paperback]

Keith Sawyer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2008

Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? Group Genius tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity, revealing that creativity is always collaborative-even when you’re alone. Sharing the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups, theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, Keith Sawyer shows us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forget about the myth of the solitary genius: collaborative effort generates ideas and inventions, says this useful, upbeat book about how innovation always emerges from a series of sparks—never a single flash of insight. Judiciously wielding exercises and dozens of examples, Sawyer (Explaining Creativity) helps the reader understand how people think and function in and out of groups. He looks at how J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis composed their epic novels in concert, how unorganized individuals can come together to provide disaster relief more efficiently than government planners, how Charles Darwin and Samuel Morse built their work on others' discoveries, how information sharing helped Silicon Valley beat out Boston's computer startups. (Sawyer's riffs on jazz ensembles and improv comedy as sites of ingenuity are less convincing.) Basing much of his work on that of mentor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—who writes about reaching the state of heightened consciousness he calls flow—Sawyer offers guidelines for creating group flow. Insisting that collaborative webs are more important than creative people, he calls for an organizational culture that fosters equivocality, improvised innovation, and constant conversation—that's a recipe for group genius. Even if few readers are in a position to do away with their organizational chart, this is a solid recipe for unexpected innovation. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Keith Sawyer is an associate professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the textbook Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, has designed video games for Atari, and lectures frequently to both academic and business audiences. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465071937
• ISBN-13: 978-0465071937
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dr. Keith Sawyer is one of the world's leading scientific experts on creativity and innovation. In his first job after graduating from MIT, he designed videogames for Atari. He then worked for 6 years as a management consultant in Boston and New York, advising large corporations on the strategic use of information technology. He's been a jazz pianist for over 30 years, and performed with several improv theater groups in Chicago, as part of his research into jazz and improvisational theater.

In addition to ZIG ZAG, his books include GROUP GENIUS and EXPLAINING CREATIVITY, and he has published over 80 scientific articles.

Dr. Sawyer is a professor of education, psychology, and business at Washington University in St. Louis.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Jazz up your groups for breakthrough genius June 30, 2007

By K. Sampanthar VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Summary:
There have been a few books recently that have challenged the commonly held beliefs and myths of innovation. Keith Sawyer; professor of psychology at Washington University in St Louis; tackles probably the most prevalent innovation myth, the lone genius. He has written a fascinating book on the power of collaboration and how it is the secret to breakthrough creativity. This book joins a small group of my favorite books on innovation; How Breakthroughs Happen, Medici Effect, The Act of Creation and The Art of Innovation. Sawyer has written a very practical book that is based on some solid scientific research.

The Audience:
I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested innovation and wants a practical framework for infusing an innovative culture throughout their company. The book is definitely aimed at a general business audience but provides enough depth into the background research to make the practical advice more meaningful. It is a very fine line Sawyer has walked with the creation of this book and I applaud him on a job well done. This is by no means a simple `how to' book, it is far more. Great writing, great ideas and if you act upon it you will get great results!!

The Details:
Sawyer has spent the last 15 years researching and studying creativity, he worked with Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi on the research behind `Flow - the science of optimal experience'. He approached his research into creativity with a similar scientific approach using indirect and direct techniques to understand the brain in action. He focused on a subject close to his heart, Jazz. Sawyer has been playing Jazz since his college days and he realized that there was some real creativity at work in jazz performances.... He quickly discovered that taking the standard approach of studying the individual seemed to miss an important piece of the experience. He realized he had to study how a whole jazz group collaborated to really understand what made one performance shine and another flop. When a group of jazz musicians found their `flow' they created something much more than the individual contributors. He used a technique called `interaction analysis' to study how a group collaborates in a dynamic environment. This is an intensive method where minute to minute interactions (gestures, body language and verbal cues) are analyzed. He expanded his research into another rich collaborative activity, improvisational theatre.
This research is the bedrock of his theories on group genius, he combined his research with some insights from his work on `flow' and coined what he called `group flow' to describe when a group gets into the zone of creativity.

Sawyer doesn't just show us the genius of groups, he takes it one step further to explain how when a lone genius generates a breakthrough idea, there is a web of people and ideas that are behind the breakthrough. He gives us examples from the work of Charles Darwin and Phil T. Farnsworth (TV) and shows the interconnected web that surrounded them to facilitate the breakthrough. Sawyer doesn't fully explore this idea, since his focus is on explaining collaboration, but it is easily translated to how individuals can leverage this network of people and ideas and use the power of collaboration to generate breakthrough ideas.

Sawyer, who started his life developing computer games for Atari and as a management consultant, uses his research to develop advice for businesses on how to build genius groups and get out of the standard `group think mentality'. He shows how to build an innovation lab and how to permeate an innovative culture through an organization. His advice will be hard to execute for most companies since they need to overcome some of the paradoxes of innovation. Innovation is predominantly inefficient, not something most managers want to hear. He even explores a lot of research from the original work on brainstorming by Alex Osborn and studies that followed that challenged the findings. He doesn't gloss over the fact that not all tasks need an innovative methodology and are better handled `solo' than in groups. He does explain that the studies that challenged Osborn's findings on brainstorming were using it for the wrong types of work. Sawyer shows that for companies that want to develop breakthrough ideas, they need to bite the bullet of inefficiency and develop genius groups.

The Take-Aways:
- Collaboration is the secret to breakthrough innovation
- Group Genius is best suited for breakthrough ideas and not for pedestrian improvement projects, where individuals perform far better
- Innovation is inefficient and companies need to embrace the risk of failure
- Even when individuals come up with a breakthrough, they are normally at the center of a web of people and ideas that came together

Innovation will never be routine and it comes with many challenges; Sawyer has written a great book that provides a good roadmap for a company that wants to infuse a creative culture throughout their organization.

Kes Sampanthar
Inventor of ThinkCube Read more ›

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How "ordinary" people - working together -- can achieve extraordinary innovation July 17, 2007

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I have had a lifelong interest in etymology. Curious to know the origin of "genius," I checked several sources and here is what I learned. The Latin word "genius" originally meant "deity of generation and birth" and as its meaning evolved over time via various languages, it was used to describe "a person of outstanding intellectual ability." We do indeed view those of superior intellect (e.g. Plato and Aristotle, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein) as secular equivalents of religious deities and certainly admire their mental capabilities. We also tend to toss the word "genius" around somewhat carelessly when referring to entertainers, athletes, and business executives. That said, the fact remains that throughout human history, what Keith Sawyer characterizes as "collaborative genius" has made significant contributions in ways and to an extent few (if any) individuals have. In fact, the more I think about all this, the more I appreciate the meaning and significance of Bernard of Chartres' observation (incorrectly attributed to Isaac Newton) that "We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants."

Here is a brief excerpt which correctly indicates one of Keith Sawyer's core concepts: "In both an improv group and a successful work team, the members play off one another, each person's contributions providing the spark for the next. Together, the improvisational team creates a novel emergent product, one that's more responsive to the changing environment and [key point] better than what anyone could have developed alone. Improvisational teams are the building blocks of innovative organizations, and organizations that can successfully build improvisational teams will be more likely to innovate effectively...."

Make no mistake about it: although there can be indeed great creative power of collaboration, the process is necessarily messy, frustrating, at times perhaps discouraging. However, on the basis of his extensive research since the 1990s, Sawyer has identified seven key characteristics of effective creative teams: Innovation emerges over time, successful collaborative teams practice "deep listening," team members build on their collaborators' ideas, only over a period of time do the meaning and significance of each idea become clear, meanwhile "surprising" (i.e. unforeseen) ideas emerge, innovation is inefficient (trial and error, frequent false starts and detours, "dry wells," etc.), and innovation emerges "from the bottom up."

Sawyer carefully organizes his material within three Parts: The Collaborative Team (Chapters 1-4), The Collaborative Mind (Chapters 5-7), and The Collaborative Organization (Chapters 8-11). One of Sawyer's most valuable insights, examined with both rigor and eloquence, is that people who are steadfastly convinced that they are not "creative" can nonetheless work effectively together to generate (albeit eventually) profoundly innovative ideas. There are some "ifs," of course. First, senior managers must provide full support (including sufficient resources, especially time) of a collaborative team. Next, they must be patient rather than committing the common mistake of "ripping out a seedling to see how well it's growing." Also, they must understand - really understand - the meaning and especially the implications of the aforementioned seven key characteristics of effective creative teams. Finally, they must recognize that each "failure" (however defined) is a unique learning opportunity for them as well as for team members.

Credit Keith Sawyer with a brilliant achievement, especially at a time when the need for innovative thinking and creative collaboration is greater now than ever before.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Howard Gardner's studies of multiple intelligences, notably Creating Minds (i.e. those of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi) and his more recently published Five Minds for the Future. Also Andrew Hargadon's How Breakthroughs Happen, Michael Ray and Rochelle's Myers' Creativity in Business, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, Henry Chesbrough's Open Innovation and Open Business Models, Michael Michalko's Cracking Creativity, Richard Ogle's Smart World, and X-teams co-authored by Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman. Read more ›

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Collaborating multiplies your creativity September 7, 2007

By Rolf Dobelli HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

As befits its subject matter, this is a lively and innovative book, which uses many examples drawn from the worlds of jazz and improvisational theater, as well as from creative writing, cycling, banking and computer technology. Keith Sawyer doesn't stop at telling stories, though; he also supports his ideas with solid evidence. In well-organized chapters, complete with summaries and checklists, he debunks common beliefs about the nature of creativity - primarily, the myth that you need to be an isolated genius to succeed. Instead, he argues that innovation is most often the result of collaboration. Sawyer overreaches in some instances: He does not fully explain why some individuals are so much more creative than others in the same "collaborative web," or why some individuals can produce revolutionary ideas in relative isolation. However, that's a quibble, since Sawyer tackles a complex and slippery topic and comes up with some genuinely new insights. We recommend this book to managers and members of workplace teams, and executives who wish to encourage creative thinking.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Getting more out of more people,other things being equal October 20, 2008

By J. Michael Innes

Format:Hardcover

Ever thought that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane? Or that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, James Watt invented the steam engine, John Logie Baird did likewise for television and Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin (all from Scotland, by the way, the land of genius)? Sir Isaac Newton invented the calculus. Right! C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia entirely from the spark of genius from within? Well, after reading this book you will see that these various stories of geniuses inventing things single-handedly, while warding off the depredations of jealous and rival others, are all myths, perpetuated by the believers in the importance of the individual and the notion that creativity can reside only within the single person.

This book makes a strong case for the view that inventions are, more likely than not, the outcome of collaboration or at least the use by individuals of information provided by a web of informants, friends, rivals, students, writers and a further miscellany of people, who provide the wherewithal that the "inventor" can use at the right time and the right place.

This book fulfils three purposes. The first is that it provides a free flowing and exciting account of how we think about the process of creativity. We can understand that how people produce the ideas and actions that lead to great works of art, scientific breakthroughs and the technology that we have all become so dependent upon in everyday living , have progressed from attempts to understand the thought processes of the lone genius to the realisation that creativity stems from teams of co-workers and collaborative webs of participants.... As someone whose early research was concerned with the associative processes underlying creativity within the individual and who later worked through an understanding of the dynamics of group interaction to see the potential of collaboration, I can vouch that this book provides a good primer of work in the area and it does so with flair and humour.

The second is that it gives, in Part 2, a set of puzzles and tasks that can be used by individuals, but more importantly groups and organizations, to experience the insight that alerts them to the possibility of creative collaboration and which can also enhance that creativity. It is a primer and also a training manual.

The third benefit of reading this book is that it provides a series of case studies of successful modern companies that have benefited society through creative collaboration and many organizations, large and small, can take courage from these stories and consider breaking out of their current structures and practices and try the new.

A central premise of the book is that creativity and problem solving are dependent upon the utilisation of knowledge, distributed most effectively across many people and not only resident within an individual. This has always been the premise upon which the idea that distributed knowledge should be superior to individual knowledge. The problem until recently has been that the barriers to the sharing of knowledge have been difficult to overcome and groups of people share more than knowledge; they share inhibitions and past experiences which prevent the utilisation of knowledge that comes from other people. This book, like several others that have been recently published, is based upon the notion that with the internet and the development of network theory, the sharing and utilisation of knowledge have become more democratic and practical.

Sawyer looks at the literature on group problem solving and creativity in this light, and looks at what is emerging in work on webs of collaboration and networks of associations. There are many thoughts on how the utilisation of networks can facilitate thinking and problem solving and chapters 8 and 9 repay close attention and are rewarding.

As a social psychologist, however,one can take a more critical position. While Sawyer does acknowledge that there are lots of conditions that will produce quite the opposite state of affairs, he does not give this material much room. Individuals in many settings are far superior to groups in the quality of thinking that they produce. One can add countless examples of studies where it can be demonstrated that, in fact, groups are "dangerous to your mental health". Sawyer's book is one of several which have appeared recently with the same message. It is, however, more accessible than James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few", and more balanced in its presentation of contrary evidence than Howe's "Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business". It is as optimistic as Sunstein's "Infotopia: How many minds produce knowledge" and one should not perhaps "rain on the parade" too liberally. But it would be foolish to take the contents of this book and apply the nostrums will-nilly to the all the tasks all organizations have to face. Like most insights which are used to generate formulae for practice, in this book, as in many others written today,one has to add "it depends" as a limiting statement after most observations and inferences.

Sawyer does add another important ingredient which does differentiate the book from these others,however, a set of core ideas concerned with the creative process that can be simply stated here and which can give a foretaste for the book. The first set of concepts stems from the idea of "flow", the notion that, when we are engaged in a task which entirely occupies our talents and we are concentrating on achieving our goal, we can attain a new state of consciousness where past, present and future seem to merge into one and we are almost outside of the environment. Sawyer applies this idea of individual consciousness to the experience we can attain within a successful operating group.

"Flow" in a group can be created when there at least five conditions in existence simultaneously. The group must have a clear goal, in the case of the dynamic tertiary education organization, a goal of solving specific problems within that environment. The group members must engage with each other completely, that is they demonstrate "close listening" where members are totally open to the ideas and suggestions of others, with no preconceptions. They are also concentrating only on the task, excluding intruding and distracting tasks and messages. They are given autonomy to address the task and have accepted that responsibility, and they subsume their own egos to the group, so that no one individual has individual leadership responsibility. If these conditions can be achieved, then the group is in a state of readiness to address the problems innovatively and to achieve novel solutions of high quality.

Of course, the achievement of this state of group consciousness is not easy and cannot be guaranteed, even if many of the conditions are in place. The group members need themselves to be skilled and knowledgeable, able to contribute and respond to others. But many people can report having experienced this state. Sawyer, while a psychologist, really formulated his ideas from his experience as a jazz musician, where collaboration and improvisation by the band members must predate the demonstration to the audience of a successful performance. If you are a musician or have played group sports, then you may well have experienced "flow" at some level, even if it has not been as an elite. The metaphor of music collaboration and sport makes an interesting comparison with the metaphor of the organisation as a military team prevalent today.

Setting aside any provisos, however, in the spirit of engaging creatively with an issue or problem, this book should be studied in the context in which it is written, to be seen as a creative solution to a pervasive issue in organisational behaviour. As a "Beginner's Guide" to the tribulations of group and organisational problem solving, this book on Group Genius, is certainly worth reading and studying. For an organization which has several teams, sometimes with goals and modes of operation which appear different, but which are, however, all seeking to achieve an overall goal within a particularly constrained market, this would be a good start to achieve a consensus that is, at the same time and perhaps somewhat paradoxically, creative.
Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce KnowledgeThe Wisdom of CrowdsCrowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business Read more ›