Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first person on the moon. But how many people helped him get there? Of course there was the rest of the crew: Buzz Aldrin and the oft-forgotten Michael Collins. Then, just like in the movies, there were the dozens of worried-looking mission-control staff on the ground, and notables like Van Braun—intellectual forces who drove the entire program. ^[97] But what about the people who made the many complicated parts needed to construct Apollo 11? And what about the managers, designers, and planners who conceived the ideas, organized engineering teams, and coordinated years of work? The numbers add up fast. More than 500,000 people worked on the NASA effort to put a person on the moon. For Armstrong to succeed required contributions from an entire metropolis worth of people, not including the millions of taxpayers who paid the bills, and the president who challenged a nation to believe. Neil Armstrong is a household name only because his contribution was the most visible. However, the most visible contribution isn't necessarily the most significant.

The fact that we know the names Neil Armstrong, Leonardo da Vinci, or Frank Lloyd Wright is an innovation all its own. If you want to know who designed the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman Coliseum, or the Great Wall of China, you're out of luck: no one knows. It wasn't until the 1500s and the rise of the Renaissance that Western cultures grew comfortable acknowledging people's creative abilities and individual achievements (we covered this briefly in Chapter 1). Arnold Pacey writes in The Maze of Ingenuity, "Creation had previously been thought of as the prerogative of god; now it was seen as activity in which mankind could share…." While the inventors of the compass, the sword, or the mechanical clock missed their chance to make the history books, most inventions since the Renaissance have been credited to one or more individuals. ^[98] Until then it wasn't important or culturally acceptable to document who deserved credit for creativity.

This shift came with baggage: not everyone was allowed in the special "creative" club. The only people with creative license were geniuses, the Michelangelos and da Vincis, whose talents seemed to stretch beyond human limitations. The rest of us, ordinary as we are, were expected to happily extend our worship to include these superhumans. Yet, these people, for all their brilliance, rarely worked alone. They shared their meals, romances, and daily lives with others, from ordinary shopkeepers to honest craftsmen, who influenced them and their work in many ways. Raphael, Plato, and Edison all had apprentices (in fact, when they were young, they worked as apprentices to older masters). They studied the great works of their time and had significant aid from unnamed assistants in making their masterpieces. They also benefited from powerful friendships: da Vinci was a pal of Machiavelli; Michelangelo was childhood friends with Pope Clement (who, as an adult, would commission many great works from him).

Rivalries played roles, too: would Michelangelo or da Vinci, motivated by their mutual dislike for each other, have produced the same masterpieces if stranded on separate deserted islands? Michelangelo hated painting, and the Sistine Chapel was likely motivated in part to show up da Vinci. Would Coke be the company it is today without Pepsi? Microsoft without Apple? Take the supporting factors away, and the supposedly sole innovator doesn't seem superhuman anymore.

To be fair, those innovators are still amazing and awesome in their own right. Replacing Michelangelo with Britney Spears, or Edison with my dog Max—while leaving all other forces intact— would produce zero masterpieces (though Max is pretty smart). But the work of these individuals was far from solo or divine. If you look hard, you can find rare individuals who do achieve greatness in isolation—Tesla and Newton were notorious loners— but they are so rare, and their behavior so eccentric, that they are tough examples to learn from.

Today, years away from the Renaissance, we're still attached to the myth of lone inventors. We do recognize collaboration and partnerships, but we often fall back on tales of lone innovators as heroic figures for reasons of convenience. We insist on isolating credit and dismissing the importance of others. Patent law, by design, credits one or a handful of individuals, assuming not only that ideas are unique and separable, which is dubious, but that individual names can be given legal ownership of ideas. Patents, as currently applied in the U.S., do solve problems, but they create just as many. They distort popular understanding of how inventions happen, as well as which innovations are most valuable to the world. ^[99]

Guy Kawasaki, author of Rules for Revolutionaries and former Apple fellow, argues for demystifying lone invention. In his experience, great innovations, and businesses, are born when two or more creators work together to make things happen. He recommends:

Grand partnerships are easy to find: John Lennon and Paul McCartney, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin.