A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times Sunday Review titled “The Rise of the New Groupthink” by Susan Cain is stirring quite the debate. The writer’s main thesis postulates that the growing cultural trend towards group collaboration is hindering our creativity and societal achievements. Needless to say, this goes against the grain most of us experience in the workplace. Being a creative director, and having built a career on the merit of my ideas, this discourse hits close to home. I believe Cain initiates a compelling argument around the benefits of solitary thinking but perhaps overgeneralizes the notion of what it means to be creative or generate creative ideas. Truly great ideas that change our perspective of the world around us, must inevitably have the power and strength to stand out from the rest. To do so, they must have vision. And it follows, that to have true vision, they must invariably have a singular point of view. That’s where her argument gathers steam. If we name any of the great creative innovators in the last 20 years who have made an impact on the creative landscape, their genius is born from a singular vision and certainly not from large group collaboration. In fact, it is almost inherent that truly creative ideas should breed discord, since this is what sets them apart from the rest; and yet conversely, they must find a resonant key to capture our collective imagination. I think this is where most organizations and creative workplaces fall short. The challenge truly becomes deciding when one must have vision and allow for singularity to generate a creative idea versus when one needs group collaboration and consensus to creatively solve a problem. And speaking from experience, and as Susan Cain points out, our cultural/workplace bias is to always defer to the latter.

peter g