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Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration Hardcover – June 5, 2007

by Keith Sawyer (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 114 ratings
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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? In this authoritative and fascinating new book, Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity and erects new principles in their place. He reveals that creativity is always collaborative-even when you’re alone. (That ?eureka” moment in the bathtub couldn’t have come to Archimedes if he hadn’t spent so many hours arguing and comparing notes with his fellow mathematicians and philosophers.) Sawyer draws on compelling stories of inventions and innovations: the inventors of the ATM, the mountain bike, and open source operating systems, among others, to demonstrate the freewheeling ways of true innovation. He shares the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups, theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, to show 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.
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  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Basic Books
  4. Publication date
    June 5, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0465071929
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0465071920
  8. See all details
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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.

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

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (June 5, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465071929
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465071920
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.15 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 114 ratings

About the author

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R. Keith Sawyer

R. Keith Sawyer

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Dr. Keith Sawyer is an American psychologist and author. He's one of the world's leading scientific experts on creativity, innovation, and learning. He's published 19 books, including the best-sellers GROUP GENIUS and ZIG ZAG. In his first job after graduating from MIT, he designed videogames for Atari. He then worked for 6 years as an artificial intelligence software developer and consultant in Boston and New York, advising large corporations on the strategic use of AI. He's been a jazz pianist for over 30 years, and performed with several improv theater groups in Chicago, and he draws on these experiences in his research and books.

Dr. Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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  • Tim Barrie
    5.0 out of 5 stars Myth Busting...
    Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    `Group Genius' is a myth busting work articulating the results of many studies into how the creative process works. It demonstrates the difference between how we perceive it working and how it actually works.

    In short:
    While we perceive that we have sudden moments of insight, the `eureka!' moment, in reality these moments are really achieved through lots of tiny steps usually strongly influenced by input from other people. This process is not an `assertion' it is the result of many objective studies which are detailed in the book. The really interesting aspect of this is that the people that experienced the creative `eureka!' moment almost always perceived the experience differently to what actually took place.

    What I learned:
    1. That we cannot trust our subjective experiences to necessarily accurately reflect reality, at least not without objectively testing them.
    2. There is not so much mystery nowadays regarding "Insight" or "Hunches" or "Instincts" and they are certainly not supernatural. They are understandable in practical ways.
    3. If you study the latest developments and learnings in the field of neuroscience much of what used to be the realm of the `spiritual' and the `mystery of human existence' and `consciousness' is being understood in much the same way as we have learned why the sun comes up, why people get ill and why it rains.

    The question:
    Do you have the curiosity, drive and interest to learn about reality? Or like so many people nowadays do you prefer to sit inside of a protective shell of subjectivity and ignorance regarding the human experience?

    The knowledge is there for those interested in learning.
    8 people found this helpful
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  • Karen K. Green
    5.0 out of 5 stars THIS BOOK IS READABLE, INTERESTING, UNDERSTANDABLE AND USEFUL.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    I am a teacher developing and implementing new systems for evaluation, professional development and teacher leadership through teacher-led collaborative work groups. We are entering an implementation phase, after two years of collaborative research and development. This book points out many valuable concepts essential to leveraging the wisdom of individuals and groups. For example Sawyer writes about how to harness the value of improvisation, how ideas can be leveraged, how mistakes can be building blocks, how to maximize work groups, how to maximize individual work, and how to get a group to flow. He cites ample research and historical examples of innovation through collaboration, and shows the power of both intentional and unintentional collaboration. The chapters are divided into discussions of collaborative teams, minds and organizations. I received several ideas from reading this book on how to leverage the collective wisdom of my workplace.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Bas Vodde
    4.0 out of 5 stars Creativity explored through groups
    Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Group Genius was recommended to me by a good friend of mine, however it was quite different from my expectations. I was expecting a book about teams and I got a book about creativity. But hey, that's my fault believing recommendations blindly. Group Genius was different than I expected, yet it was an excellent book.

    The central theme of the book is that creativity always comes from groups of people and never really from the lone and crazy inventor. New ideas are always created together with the idea of others. Therefore, if you want to have creativity in your organization, promoting this "collaborative web" is a good idea.

    The book consists of 3 different parts. The first part (4 chapters) talks about creating creativity in teams. About how teams can be more... or less than the sum of it's parts and also how to create the environment for creating group flow... the state of productivity and creativity in a group.

    The second part (3 chapters) is about creativity research and how people perceive creativity and why their perceptions is often not reality. It contains wonderful descriptions of research experiments and historical facts and the authors perspective on those historical facts. The creativity research is often surprising!

    The last part of the book (4 chapters) takes the learnings of the previous chapters and gives suggestions on how to practically apply them in collaborative organization. It explains that as an organization, you need to realize that ideas are created in cooperation between people even with the outside of the organization and trying to put too much control on this will probably kill the creativity and innovation, which on the long-term will probably be harmful for the organization. It gives wonderful examples of this happens, for example, the computer industry from Boston (controlling) vs the one in California (more open).

    All in all, I enjoyed the book a lot and it had a couple of very interesting points and insights. It was well written and well researched (though, at times I felt the author did look at e.g. historical events only from the perspective that would make the point he was trying to make). I'd recommend anyone who is interested in creativity to read it and understand the impact of the research and history that the author is describing. All in all, I was thinking between 4 and 5 Amazon stars, yet I decided to go with 4 because though the book is great and insightful, it wasn't a WOW book for me. Still recommended.
    11 people found this helpful
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  • B. Stuart
    5.0 out of 5 stars Results
    Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    After reading Keith Sawyer's interesting work for years, I added Group Genius as a required text in an Organization Design MBA class I teach. Students are evening students, middle managers to above. They represent all domains, IT, Finance, Engineering, Law, Accounting, Real Estate/Construction and other sciences as well. Following the addition of Group Genius, students began to turn in truly innovative work, creative and original, beyond anything I've seen in years of teaching. They recognized that this was no ordinary text but one they could apply instantly to their own group and team work. They wrote about using it immediately in the workplace, with extraordinary results. That's what I found too, in the classroom, among working people, extraordinary results.
    13 people found this helpful
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  • kaacim
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good concept, but better as essay.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    The first chapter is great---full of good ideas and valuable concepts. After that, the book is an annoying rehash of the same points. Everyone wants to write a book, but in this case, an essay format or a TED presentation would have been a more powerful format.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Kim Wrathall
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
    Reviewed in Canada on July 27, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Such a great insightful read. Learned so much about collaboration but also about historic events that I knew nothing about the back stories for. Would highly recommend.
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  • Charalee Graydon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Work on Collaboration
    Reviewed in Spain on July 22, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I found the book interesting and useful in describing the principles of collaboration, The author had thoroughly researched his topic and provided useful examples throughout the book. I would recommend this book to companies and individuals working with the concept of collaboration. I will use some of the examples of collaborative initiative that were provided in collaborative work I am involved with.
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  • Alan
    5.0 out of 5 stars blows the myth of the lone individual with the sudden idea
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    I've been working with creativity and collaboration in organisations for a long time, and this is a well researched and insightful exploration of the topic. It explains what happens and what works, without the simplistic hype you get in so many texts these days. It was recommended to me by several people on a LInkedIn group I belong to and I can see why.
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  • Prof Dr Olaf-Axel Burow
    5.0 out of 5 stars Das derzeit beste Buch zum kollaborativen Lernen der Zukunft!
    Reviewed in Germany on August 12, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    "Kollaboration" - gemeinsames Schöpfertum ist das Geheimnis kreativer Durchbrüche - so die Kernthese des ausgezeichnet geschriebenen Buches von Keith Sawyer.Diese These belegt er mit einer Reihe von eindrucksvollen Beispielen, die von der Entwicklung des Motorflugzeuges durch die Gebrüder Wright, des Mountainbikes, der Fernsehens, von e-mail oder des Spieles Monopoly reichen. Alle diese Produkte sind demnach Ergebnis eines längerfristigen Prozesses zum Teil unsichtbarer Zusammenarbeit. Selbst die Evolutionstheorie Darwins oder die Romane Tolkiens erweisen sich bei näherer Betrachtung als Ergebnis des "Group Genius". Ähnlich wie ich es in der "Individualisierungsfalle" (Burow 1999) und in "Ich bin gut - wir sind besser. (Burow 2000)Ich bin gut, wir sind besser: Erfolgsmodelle kreativer Gruppen anhand der Enwicklung des Apple Personalcomputers und der Musik der Beatles beschrieben habe, sind überragenden Durchbrüche niemals allein Ausdruck eines einsamen Genies, das plötzlich erleuchtet wird, sondern Konsquenz besonders aufgebauter Anregungsfelder, die ich als "Kreative Felder" bezeichnet und definiert habe. Ohne sich darauf zu beziehen führt Saywer diesen Gedanken weiter und zeigt, welche Konsequenzen sich für Organisationen ergeben, die für mehr Innovationen und kreative Durchbrüche sorgen wollen. Wir stimmen beide überein, dass der Gruppengeist ein entscheidender Faktor ist, dessen Wirken man exemplarisch anhand der Arbeit von Jazzbands und Improvisationstheatern nachverfolgen kann. Demnach bedarf es bestimmter Rahmenbedingungen und Prinzipien sowie einer qualifizierten Moderation, um das Entstehen Kreativer Felder zu ermöglichen. Firmen wie google, IDEO oder Gore haben dies erkannt und schaffen ebenso wie Microsoft in seinem neuen Büro in Amsterdam kreative Lehr-/Lern- und Entwicklungslandschaften.
    Sawyers Buch zeigt detailliert was beachtet werden muss, um kollaboratives Schöpfertum zu ermöglichen und entwirft damit ein neues Paradigma, dass nicht nur für Firmen, sondern auch für Bildungseinrichtungen von zentraler Bedeutung ist: "Group Genius" zeigt, dass wir uns verabschieden müssen, vom vereinzelten Lerner, und stattdessen Umgebungen schaffen sollten, in denen der Einzelne seine Signaturstärken entdecken und im Team mit anderen weiterentwickeln kann.
    Fazit: Das derzeit beste Buch zum kollaborativen Lernen der Zukunft!

    Prof.Dr. Olaf-Axel Burow Universität Kassel
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2014
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    Great!
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