THE PRINCIPLE

Collaboration can give results that are greater than the sum of the parts

Many, if not most, important breakthroughs are the result of teamwork. Even if one person led the effort, it’s only in the arts that geniuses tend to work by themselves, and even there most of them will admit to being heavily influenced by someone else.

The mistake most of us make when looking for someone to work with is seeking someone who is a lot like us. After all, people tend to like those they perceive to be like themselves. That’s fine for finding someone to go to the pub with, but exactly the wrong strategy for finding a collaborator.

Professor Scott Page of the University of Michigan, the author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Teams, Schools, and Societies, said: ‘Watson plus Crick were far more impressive than either in isolation.’ He also pointed out that on a far larger scale, Silicon Valley’s breadth of bright engineers from different academic disciplines and from around the world out-innovates other technology hotspots with equal brainpower but less diversity.

The best collaborator has strengths that you lack, and vice versa. This sometimes also means that you will have different personalities and interests and may not naturally be the best of friends, but that shouldn’t matter.

If you want to find a collaborator, consider someone whose background and worldviews are different from your own. This could mean differences in gender, race, ethnicity, physical capabilities, culture, geographical location and sexual orientation, as well as education or training.

With the advent of the internet, it has become possible to collaborate easily with people halfway around the world whom you may never actually meet.

The same principle applies to situations in which you are not collaborating but looking for someone to hire for certain functions. The section ‘Outsource’ in Part 3 will give you some tips on how to find those people.