I’ve just returned from presenting a keynote address at a conference at the University of Padua, in Padua, Italy: the title of the conference was “Improvisation: Between Technique and Spontaneity.”  The core idea of the conference was that the tension between technique and spontaneity is found in just about all expert and professional activity.  Professionals are “experts” because they’ve mastered a large set of routines and “cookbook” solutions to problems.  But that, alone, isn’t enough.  To be a master, you have to be able to improvisationally respond to the unexpected, to weave new cloth out of known solutions and routines.

Jazz musicians know this better than just about everyone.  To play jazz at a high level requires years of hard work and practice.  It’s a myth that jazz improvisation means “anything goes”–the technique, the routines, the shared cultural norms and communication practices are what allow the genius of the group to exceed the brilliance of any one individual.  That’s why the Padua conference had a strong jazz emphasis.  And, unusual for an academic conference, it was collaboratively organized by three different departments: education, philosophy, and linguistic, communication, and performing arts (I know, that last department name is a mouthful!)

In my talk, I described how experienced teachers also blend technique and spontaneity in the classroom.  I cited research that has discovered that experienced teachers improvise more than novice teachers; but, paradoxically, they also have mastered more standard routines than novice teachers.  Professional expertise, like jazz improvisation, requires both mastery of standard solutions and routines as well as improvisational ability.

Other highlights of the conference included talks by Andy Hamilton (a philosopher at Durham University), Tord Gustavsen (an internationally known jazz pianist and now a doctoral student at Oslo University), and Frank Barrett (at the business school at the Naval Postgraduate University).  And later that night, the Tord Gustavsen trio performed to a sold-out crowd of 600 people in the beautiful Auditorium Pollini.

Thanks to Marina Santi, the lead organizer, for this wonderful event!

Apple’s corporate image is one of the creative iconoclast; their motto, “Think Different.” Their products look great. Artsy people like graphic designers, photographers, and film directors choose Apples.

Does the ad campaign work? Does the average person-in-the-street think of Apple computers as being more creative? A recent study done at Duke University’s Fuqua school of business provides some evidence that it does. This research has been all over the newspapers and even on NPR, so you may have already heard the take-home message: research subjects were shown an image of either Apple’s corporate logo or IBM’s corporate logo, and immediately afterwards they were given a creativity test. The subjects who’d seen the Apple logo scored higher on the creativity test. Ready-made message for news reporters: Apple really does make people “think different”. I’m sure Apple’s PR department was high-fiving over this free publicity!

But the details of the study haven’t been reported at all, and when you look at the details, the message is more complex. First of all, the test used to measure “creativity” has some problems; it’s from a research article published back in 1958, and all it asks is “think of as many unusual uses as possible for a brick.” (It’s called the “unusual uses test”.) This is a measure of what creativity researchers call “divergent thinking” and it isn’t really what most of us mean when we talk about creativity. And in fact, no studies have been able to prove that a higher score on divergent thinking tests translates into real-world creative output. Second, the difference between seeing Apple or IBM was very small. The 219 subjects who saw an Apple logo, on average, wrote down 7.68 uses; the 122 who saw IBM wrote down 6.10. When independent judges rated the creativity of the answers, Apple answers got a rating of 8.44, IBM answers a rating of 7.98. These differences were statistically significant, but it’s not hard for small differences to reach statistical significance when you have so many subjects; it’s well-known in psychological research that a greater number of subjects raises the significance of the finding. And furthermore, when the researchers added a third experimental condition–no brand logo shown at all–the Apple subjects did not score significantly higher than these “no brand” subjects (they still scored higher than IBM subjects, though).

The researchers later did another experiment where they first measured how much each subject valued creativity–how much they wanted to be creative. Those who scored low on this measure, who didn’t really want to be creative, showed no differences on the unusual uses test with either Apple or IBM logos. But those who scored highly showed a difference, coming up with about 8 unusual uses for the brick in the Apple condition, but just barely over 5 in the IBM condition, and just barely over 5 in the no-brand condition. (And, the independent judges rated the Apple uses as being the most creative of all three conditions.)

One final interesting fact about this study: in the first experiment, the Apple and IBM logos were flashed on the screen for only about 13 milliseconds, so briefly that no one was consciously aware they had seen the logo. This was a subliminal effect. In the second experiment, the one that asked about your motivation to be creative, the subjects actually saw (and manipulated) images of generic-looking computers, with either an Apple or IBM logo prominently displayed on the computer’s monitor (or no computers at all, in the no brand condition).

You know how your car always seems to run better after you take it to the car wash? Of course, it runs exactly the same as before you washed it. In the same way, when you use a product that you associate with creativity, you should feel more creative (even though you’re probably not). However, discovering that exposure to corporate logos changed their score on a test is intriguing. I wouldn’t call the “unusual uses test” a measure of creativity; but the experiment makes you wonder, nonetheless. Should Apple feel proud about the results of this research? The headline would be very different if it read “Staring at Apple computers helps you think of strange ways to use a brick.”

Today I’m sitting at Harvard Business School, participating in what promises to be a seminal conference about creativity and innovation–with business leaders including Kim Malone Scott (Google) and Scott Cook (Intuit), and top scholars like Howard Gardner (Harvard) and Bob Sutton (Stanford).

The session opened this morning with four top business leaders, who were each asked: “What are the most important unresolved questions about creativity and innovation?” The first to speak was Kim Malone Scott, a senior manager at Google who is director of AdSense online sales and operations. Her question: “Can creativity scale?” Creativity is most active in a small collaborating group: the most innovative companies are small startups. But eventually, as the company grows, collaboration becomes bureaucracy. So how can a company keep benefiting from the power of collaboration, even as it grows? At Google, Kim reported a few ways that Google was trying to solve this problem: (1) permission isn’t required to start something, but you have to tell everybody first; (2) avoid ownership, because that creates silos; most businesses at Google do not have a single top manager. No one is the manager of the Internet search business at Google. (3) Redundant projects, and frequent failure, are absolutely necessary.

Next was Diego Rodriguez, head of the Palo Alto office of the legendary design firm IDEO. His key question was: “How can we move from depending on the lone genius, to tapping the power of collaboration?” As successful examples, he provided Proctor & Gamble’s Innocentive idea marketplace; Mozilla’s open source code base; and Threadless, the web site where you can post t-shirt designs and then vote on your favorite designs. He emphasized that collaboration occurs across boundaries, when you don’t know who’s in charge, and when everyone is intrinsically motivated.

Third, Mark Fishman, head of research at the pharmaceutical company Novartis, asked “Can a company be both efficient and innovative?” Efficiency is critical at a pharmaceutical company, when it can take 10 years and $1 billion to develop a single new product.  One comment of his that stood out for me: “Six Sigma kills innovation.”

Finally, Scott Cook, founder of Intuit (the maker of the Quicken software) asked “Do we even need management anymore?” In his analysis, innovation today almost always results from emergent discovery out in the field. At Google and many other innovative companies, the best ideas emerge from employees or customers, not from managers–who often seem to just get in the way of innovation.

All four of these legendary executives seemed to be reading from the book Group Genius, where the message is that creativity is never about a lone genius, but is rather about collaboration and social networks. However, I’d be surprised (although delighted) if any of them had read my book. What’s really going on here is that the idea of “group genius” is broadly out there, in the culture.  This is my argument in the book: that even though I am the author of Group Genius, my book is just one manifestation of a collective revealing of knowledge about the importance of collaboration.

After this panel, the legendary Howard Gardner spoke on the topic of “Creativity and Responsibility”: can you be both creative and responsible?  Later speakers on Friday included Harvard’s Amy Edmondson (on the role of failure in creativity) and Stanford’s Jim March (on adaptability and creativity).

Kudos to the organizing panel, led by Theresa Amabile.  This is a highly significant event.

Did you know that Lever Brothers, the consumer products powerhouse, had teams of actors working with employees and managers at all levels? After a series of interviews, the acting company put on a 40-minute performance in front of hundreds of employees, illustrating behavior–both good and bad–within the company. The project was called Catalyst.

Would you believe that dance instruction could help engineers do a better job? Since 1997, the CONNECT program at the Cooper Union Engineering School has drawn on theater techniques and movement, to help teach engineers how to better understand and communicate with their clients. Engineers who had been through this program received substantially higher ratings from job recruiters.

Did you know that Lucent’s world headquarters has brought in a five-man jazz ensemble, to demonstrate to managers how musicians work collaboratively under demanding constraints?

What all of these projects have in common is their connections to a group based in New York City called “Creativity Connection.” Their mission statement: “Powering corporate performance through arts-based learning.” Executive Director Harvey Seifter was director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for many years–an orchestra that I talked about in my book Group Genius, because they rehearse and perform without a conductor, allowing creativity to emerge from the group’s interactions.

The Lever Brothers, Lucent, and Cooper Union examples all come from a special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy from 2005. Businesses are experiencing great success by sending their staff to special workshops focused on theater, jazz, and even dance.

The reason this works is that these arts are ensemble arts, and these performers are experts at using collaboration to generate creativity. I wouldn’t try this myself–it takes skilled and experienced artists and arts teachers. But I know of an increasing number of artists who are learning the language of business, and can translate their collaborative strengths to organizational contexts.

Kudos to Henry Seifter and Creativity Connection for doing this good work.

What’s your visual image of a brilliant scientist? A nerdy man in a lab coat, working late in some basement laboratory with beakers and test tubes? Someone typing at a computer in their office? Well, clear your mind of that image, because science today is all about collaboration and teamwork. This is the message of a truly impressive study published in SCIENCE magazine 18 May 2007. Three professors at Northwestern University, Stefan Wuchty, Benjamin F. Jones, and Brian Uzzi, analyzed huge databases–of 19.9 million scientific papers over 50 years, and 2.1 million patents–and found that collaboration is rapidly becoming the norm in science and in invention.

They focused on a few key numbers. First, the databases allowed them to determine which papers, and which patents, had one author, two authors, or more. Two or more authors means that the creation was collaboratively generated. In science, the average team size (number of co-authors) doubled over 45 years–from 1.9 to 3.5 authors per paper. Of course, science has become a lot more complex, and requires a lot more funding, and that might account for the larger team size. But the databases also had data about the social sciences and the arts and humanities; social science research hasn’t increased in scale and cost the same way particle physics and medicine have. And surprisingly, even in the social sciences, collaboration has become a lot more important. In 1955, only 17.5% of social science papers had two or more authors; in 2000, 51.5% of those papers did. And although papers in the arts and humanities still are mostly sole authored (over 90%), the trend over the last 50 years has also been toward more collaboration.

But what about quality and creativity? Can we find out if the collaboratively generated papers are any better? Fortunately, the databases allowed the researchers to determine the impact and influence of each paper, and of each patent, because those databases keep track of how many times the paper or patent was cited by a later publication. More citations means a more influential paper; and more citations have been shown to correlate with research quality. And guess what: over the 50 year period studied, teams generated more highly cited work in every research area, and in every time period. The implication is that teams generate better scientific research than solitary individuals.

One final interesting finding is that the creative advantage for teams has increased over the last 50 years. Although teams generated more highly cited work back in 1955, by 2000 the advantage of teams over sole individuals had become even greater. In 1955, team-authored papers received 1.7 times as many citations as sole authored papers; in 2000, they received 2.1 times as many.

In a later issue of SCIENCE magazine (14 September 2007) several letters challenging this research were published; the authors convincingly responded, by providing additional data. There’s no question that teams do better science than solitary individuals, and that the trend is working in teams’ favor.

I was only seven when all the hippies went to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 1967, so I didn’t realize that this was the fortieth anniversary until I started seeing articles in the newspaper–social commentary about what an important transformative period it was for American society. Then, I saw an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by musician Ted Nugent, taking an opposite position, calling it “The Summer of Drugs.” Other than the civil rights movement, Nugent writes, “the decade is barren of any positive cultural or social impact.”

Nugent is right about the drug use; that’s legendary. But he’s missed the cultural and social impact of the period (and so has most of the positive news coverage). It’s not in its liberal politics, or its free sex lifestyle, or the colorful clothing and long hair. Rather, forty years later, what stands out about the late 1960s is that it was when the roots of today’s collective intelligence first formed. The Internet, the personal computer, and open source software all have their philosophical and social roots in the Summer of Love.

Take the Internet–it’s a global version of what was originally called hypertext, in an influential alternative comic book called Computer Lib/Dream Machines written by Ted Nelson and published in 1974. Take the personal computer–created by a bunch of hippie hobbyists who wanted to bring computer power to the people. Take open source software–although the free software movement didn’t officially start until Richard Stallman’s manifesto in 1983, his long hair and beard, along with his claim that ideas should circulate freely, clearly owe a debt to the 1960s.

Nugent and I obviously have different musical tastes; I’m a big fan of the Grateful Dead, the most important of the San Francisco bands, which Nugent refers to as “mostly soulless rock music”. The reason why I like them is that they’re the most improvisational of all rock bands. The Grateful Dead, and other San Francisco bands of the period, borrowed the egalitarian musical ethos of jazz and adapted it to rock music. Long drawn out solos are not for everyone, but whereas improvised jazz has always been an art form with a relatively small audience, the Grateful Dead had almost three decades, performing to sold out concert halls. (I could never defend the drug usage: as Nugent would point out, the band broke up in 1995 when lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia died, after years of struggling with drug addiction.)

Even if you don’t like that improvised rock sound, it’s a manifestation of the collective and open cultural values that also resulted in today’s information technology revolution. It’s hard to imagine life today without the Internet or the personal computer. That’s what history should remember about the Summer of Love.

Call it collective intelligence, Web 2.0, swarming, or crowdsourcing—we’re supposed to be a new kind of world where collaboration and loosely structured groups always win. So why are senior executives making so much more than everyone else? Last Friday the New York Times reported that Office Depot CEO Steve Odland made $12 million, which is more than four times what the second highest paid executive there makes. In 2004, the average CEO made, on average, 431 times more than the rank-and-file worker; in 1990, it was “only” 107 times more. If it’s all about collaboration, then why are a few superstars making all the money?

Most economists argue that superstar salaries make sense, and not only for CEOs. Take pop stars: Princeton economist Alan B. Krueger studied the money they made from their concert tours between 1982 and 2003, and found that in 1982, the top one percent made 26 percent of all the revenue, where in 2003 their share jumped to 56 percent. Take sports: Twenty years ago, the best paid baseball player was Gary Carter, who earned $2.4 million from the New York Mets—41 percent more than the 25th-ranked player. This season, the top-paid player, Yankees Roger Clemens, is making $28 million, more than twice as much as the 25^th ranked player. Even American universities, long resistant to market forces, are embracing the superstar phenomenon. Hiring one big-name professor can raise a school’s reputation faster than hiring ten mid-level scholars—and that professor can easily make twice as much as his mid-level colleagues.

By way of explanation, economists note that organizations are more complex and more global than ever before, and that the competition for top talent is more severe. When it comes to pop music and sports, they point out that the globalization of American sports means that more money is coming in; and the psychology of the fans leads them to glorify specific players. You can only wear one player’s number on your jersey when you go to the game. So economists conclude that small differences in ability can translate into huge differences in pay.

But when the rank and file keep hearing about the benefits of collaboration and teamwork, you can’t blame them for being cynical. Is all this talk about collaboration really just a sham?

No, and the new science of collaborative networks resolves this apparent paradox. First, scientists have discovered that it’s common for networks to have positions of great power, even when the network depends on the collective actions of everyone to succeed. Second, it’s not often realized that CEOs today are, in fact, extremely effective at fostering collaborative networks, both in their organization and with other organizations. CEOs are paid more not only because their companies are larger, but also because their companies participate in extensive collaborative webs with other companies, other countries, and complex networks of customers. Third, the superstars of today get all of their earning power from the network that they represent. Pop singers and baseball players are paid more because their fan base is larger, with new media outlets overseas and with more effective marketing that leads to greater fan loyalty.

As collaborative networks become more powerful, the salaries of those who can create and manage them grows. The growth in executive pay is an outcome of the growth of collaborative networks. Superstars get all of their power from us.