Quirky
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Edison had a very similar nature. As he noted about himself in a 1908 interview, when he was a child he “involuntarily challenged” everything he read and desired to demonstrate whether it was right or wrong. His individualistic style of acquiring knowledge and his reflexive challenging of received wisdom eventually led him to question many of the prevailing theories of electricity.60 One of his biographers, Gerald Beals, noted that even as a boy, Edison became irritated and impatient with the way Newton’s theories were written. He felt that the classical aristocratic terms were unnecessarily confusing, and he developed a strong dislike for “high-tone” language and mathematics. In response, he developed his own theories through objective examination and experimentation. As he frequently declared, “I accept almost nothing dealing with electricity without thoroughly testing it first.” His keen memory, intelligence, and extraordinary perseverance served him well in this objective. As is discussed in Chapter 5, it was this perseverance that led him to test thousands of different potential filaments until he found one that would yield a long-lasting light bulb and to run nine thousand experiments to develop a storage battery.
Sometimes the nonconformity of breakthrough innovators is displayed in a distinct sense that the rules do not apply to them. Steve Jobs’s nonconformity was particularly notorious in this respect. Rules, as he demonstrated throughout his life, applied to other people. Jobs was comfortable being different from other people and engaged in unconventional behaviors such as extreme diets, not wearing shoes, and staring intensely without blinking at people. Although Jobs was frequently abrasive, he could also be intensely charismatic, and he used this ability to be charismatic to alter other people’s perception of the rules—a phenomenon people commonly referred to as a “reality distortion field.” As Bud Tribble, a software designer on the original Macintosh team, described it, “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.… It was dangerous to get caught in Steve’s distortion field, but it was what led him to actually be able to change reality.” Andy Hertzfeld, another software designer on the team, added that “The reality distortion field was a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.… Amazingly, the reality distortion field seemed to be effective even if you were acutely aware of it. We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature.”61 Debi Coleman, a member of the original Macintosh team who later became head of Macintosh manufacturing at Apple, likened Jobs’s charisma to a form of hypnosis: “He laser-beamed in on you and didn’t blink. It didn’t matter if he was serving purple Kool-Aid. You drank it.… It was a self-fulfilling distortion.… You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”62
Dean Kamen is another archetypal example of an innovator who does not let himself be constrained by the rules and laws that govern others. An iconoclastic and quirky genius who has taken on one grand challenge after the other, Kamen is also described as “spectacularly stubborn.” As his brother Mitch notes, “He was always focused on what he wanted to do, and nobody could ever talk him into doing something he didn’t want to do.”63 In the early 2000s he began developing a water purification machine called the Slingshot that can turn anything wet into drinkable water. In fact, in a demonstration at a 2004 conference, Kamen ran his own urine through the purifier and drank the clean water it produced.
When Kamen set out to develop the iBot, he realized that if it had wheels that could turn back and forth quickly and precisely enough, it would be able to stay upright on just two wheels, balancing much the same way a person does through rapidly shifting weight back and forth. The ability to balance upright would enable it to climb stairs, go over curbs, handle rough terrain, and more. When people said it was impossible to develop such a balancing device, he replied, “Don’t tell me it’s impossible… tell me you can’t do it.… Tell me it’s never been done. Because the only real laws in this world—the only things we really know—are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell’s equation—no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell’s equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That’s all we know that’s true. All the rest are man’s laws.…”64
The rejection of rules by Jobs and Kamen also hints at another key trait of the most fecund innovators: a profound faith in their ability to achieve their objectives known as “self-efficacy,” which will be further explored in the next chapter.
There are multiple self-reinforcing pathways connecting a sense of separateness, time alone, nonconformity, and heterodox thinking. First, having the time and liberty to pursue one’s own interests enables individuals to develop opinions and expertise, and directly reduces exposure to homogenizing norms. This is captured eloquently in a biographer’s description of Marie Curie, which notes that instead of socializing, Curie relentlessly pursued self-education and by the age of eighteen had “acquired the habit of independent work,” which gave her the ability to draw her own conclusions unconstrained by others’ perceptions and accepted paradigms. Time alone may also directly increase or reinforce one’s sense of “separateness,” or lack of belonging, because of reduced bonding time with others and, indirectly, because a person who spends less time with others may suffer in her social skill development, which can lead to poor social experiences. For some people, a reduced sense of belonging will result in greater effort to fit in; for others, it releases them from the pressure of social norms, increasing their ability to be nonconforming. As noted previously, the fact that Einstein was initially rejected by academia made it easier for him to disregard its norms and widely accepted ideas. This, in turn, helped him to throw out conventions like absolute time and ether and to develop his breakthrough theories. Curie was considered highly unconventional because she was a woman of science; perhaps this made her more likely to stand up to those who discriminated against her. Time alone and separateness can thus increase both the opportunity to develop divergent ideas and the willingness to be nonconforming.
SEPARATENESS HAS BOTH BENEFITS and costs. On the positive side, a sense of separateness can liberate people from the constraints of conventions and paradigms, freeing them to pursue more original ideas and activities. Paradigms are like well-trodden paths in science: they can accelerate your pace of travel along a known trajectory, but they discourage you from finding more novel directions for exploring the environment. As a result, hidden opportunities go undiscovered.
On the other hand, separateness can lead to psychic distress. Homo sapiens is a highly interdependent creature; evolution has ensured that most individuals instinctively know and feel their interconnectedness with others. It is thus not surprising that most people will feel some distress about separateness. The fact that the people discussed here did not express such distress might mean that other traits (such as high self-efficacy or introversion) possessed by breakthrough innovators moderate the anxiety normally produced by separateness, or it may reflect bias in how the sense of separateness is remembered or presented to the outside world.
Second, separateness can impair influence and access to resources, especially when it is caused by (or results in) actual social or physical isolation. Information, capital, and other resources are often attained through personal social networks. The size and structure of an individual’s personal network can influence access to resources as diverse as restaurant recommendations, jobs, and potential marriage partners. Individuals with larger networks, who are connected directly or indirectly to many people or whose networks have considerable range (that is, the people with whom they are connected are diverse, causing the network to span multiple occupational, social, or other spheres), reap significant advantages in their access to resources. Although isolati
on from information could help prevent an individual from converging on the same ideas possessed by others, it could also impair her ability to access information and other resources that would help her develop or execute her ideas.
Similarly, the size and structure of a person’s network also directly influence the degree to which she can influence the world around her. Having strong ties to others (connections that involve frequent and intense exchange) and a dense personal network (one in which many of a person’s contacts are also connected to one another) enhances the speed and accuracy with which information can be transferred. Dense networks usually have high levels of mutual understanding, trust, and willingness to exchange information. Ideas are more easily comprehended and assimilated in a dense network. If an innovator’s network is both dense and of great range, it greatly increases her potential influence; a poorly connected innovator may find it harder to get people to accept or use her ideas.
Thus there is a tradeoff: separateness enables inventors to create heterodox ideas, but strong cohesive networks are likely to be better for getting them implemented. The benefits and costs of a cohesive interpersonal network were explored by Professors Lee Fleming, Santiago Mingo, and David Chen. They studied every patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office between 1975 and 2002. Patents list their inventors, and many patents have more than one inventor, indicating that the work on the patent was a collaborative effort. Fleming, Mingo, and Chen then looked at each inventor’s network of collaborators: Did they coinvent with many others? Did many of their collaborators also coinvent with one another? If the latter is true, the inventor is said to have a “cohesive” network. In social network terms this corresponds to the situation where many of a person’s friends are also friends of one another, forming a tightly woven-together clique. On the other hand, an inventor might not collaborate very much at all (and thus have a small network) or might collaborate with inventors who do not coinvent with one another. In the latter case the inventor is said to have a “brokerage” position because the inventor can broker knowledge (or other resources) between other inventors who would otherwise be unconnected. In social terms, this is similar to the situation that occurs when an individual has friends who would otherwise be unconnected. For example, a person might have a friend on her soccer team, a friend in a church group, and some friends at work. If most of those friends are not friends of one another, that individual occupies a brokerage position. Brokers are important because they provide access to information (or other resources) that their connections would not otherwise have. For example, the broker who has a friend on the soccer team might know someone in the church group whom the soccer teammate might like to date, or she might be able to introduce her friend from the church group to someone at the broker’s workplace who can help him get a job.
On the other hand, being in a brokerage position could have its downsides. When many of your friends are friends of your friends, information flows quickly among the members of the group. People who are densely connected may understand and trust one another more, leading to better exchange and cooperation. The broker, unfortunately, may not benefit from the trust and deep knowledge of being centrally embedded in a densely connected group. She may have access to a broader variety of information, but it may not flow as rapidly to her or be assimilated as rapidly by the connections she transmits it to. Not surprisingly, Fleming, Mingo, and Chen found that inventors who had more-cohesive collaboration networks were less likely to generate creative ideas but that when they did generate creative ideas, those ideas were more likely to be adopted and built upon by other inventors. Inventors who were in “brokerage” positions generated many creative ideas but were less likely to have those ideas adopted.65 This was aptly illustrated in the case of Einstein: after he published his flurry of revolutionary papers in 1905, he expected to be warmly embraced by the academic community to which he did not yet really belong. Instead, he was greeted by a chilly silence that surprised and disappointed him. It was not until the revered physicist Max Planck published a paper in 1906 building on Einstein’s theory of relatively that he began to gain widespread recognition and legitimacy.
The lack of a strong and dense network can especially handicap ideas whose benefits are harder to observe in advance of their use or that require the cooperation of other stakeholders to implement. This contrast is well illustrated by comparing Benjamin Franklin to Marie Curie. Many of Franklin’s innovations were social institutions, such as the creation of the Philadelphia Public Library, the implementation of a system for sweeping and lighting the city’s streets, and the country’s first volunteer firefighting cooperative. These institutions required the considerable cooperation of others, and their outcomes were difficult to estimate in advance. To gain the support and cooperation necessary to implement them, Franklin wielded an extensive network of personal contacts, his masterfully crafted persona, and his exceptional oratorical and writing skills. Franklin invested considerable time and effort in developing and practicing a form of speech that was designed to not arouse opposition. He refrained from using words such as “certainly” and “undoubtedly” and instead would say “I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so,” “It appears to me,” or “I imagine it to be so.” As he noted in his autobiography,
This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting; and as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.66
Now compare Franklin to Curie, who was altogether different. Curie’s innovations were based on chemistry and physics, and could not be ignored—after all, they glowed. Whereas Franklin was a skilled and enthusiastic social networker who demonstrated extreme interest in managing his image and influence, Curie was a very private person who worked long hours, often only in the company of her laboratory equipment, and showed little interest in managing her image or influence. Consider the sequence of events that occurred just after her husband’s untimely death, in 1905. Marie was devastated by the loss of Pierre and characteristically turned to her work for solace. When a former pupil and close friend wrote to her complaining of her neglect, she wrote, “I no longer am able to devote any time to social life. All our friends in common will tell you that I never see them anymore except for business, for questions concerning work or education of the children. No one visits me, and I don’t see anyone and I haven’t been able to avoid offending some people in my circle and my laboratory who don’t find me sufficiently friendly.… I have completely lost the habit of conversation without a set goal.”67
In 1910, however, a longtime friend and colleague, Paul Langevin, somehow managed to convince Marie to open her heart. He was tall, handsome, and a brilliant physicist and mathematician. Unfortunately, he was also married, with four children. The two began a passionate—and secret—affair. Rumors began to swirl by the summer of 1911, and the press whipped the scandal into a frenzy. Marie did little to defend herself and instead retreated still further into her private life. Langevin’s wife found out about the affair and released to the press Langevin and Curie’s intimate letters, with details of both Curie’s passion for Langevin and her urgings that he leave his wife. For a man in France at the time, an affair was a nonissue—perhaps even to be expected. For a woman, however, it was a despicable act, inspiring vicious attacks. As Bertram Boltwood publicly declared, “She is exactly what I always thought she was, a detestable idiot!”68 People surrounded Curie’s home and threw stones at her windows. Many
of her friends turned on her, and a group of professors at the Sorbonne demanded that she leave France.
On the same day that news of the affair broke, Curie received a telegram notifying her that she had won a second Nobel Prize—this time in chemistry. Shortly after, however, a member of the Nobel Committee wrote her requesting that she not come to Sweden to collect the prize because of the scandal. The wounded yet resolute Curie wrote back:
You suggest to me… that the Academy of Stockholm, if it had been forewarned, would probably have decided not to give me the Prize, unless I could publicly explain the attacks of which I have been the object.… I must therefore act according to my convictions.… The action that you advise me would appear a grave error on my part. In fact the Prize has been awarded for discovery of Radium and Polonium. I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.… I cannot accept the idea in principle that the appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by libel and slander concerning private life. I am convinced that this opinion is shared by many people.69
Curie went to Stockholm and collected her prize. She was the only woman to have ever won two Nobel Prizes and, at the time, the only person to have ever won two Nobel Prizes in different fields. At the ceremony she paid homage to the contribution of other scientists in the field, but as she also firmly stated, “[I]solating radium as a pure salt was undertaken by me alone.”70 Though appearing somewhat hardened and proud at the ceremony, afterward she experienced a complete nervous breakdown. Her weight dropped to 103 pounds. She told her daughter Eve that she wanted to kill herself, and she spent weeks in a darkened room under medical care. She gradually recovered, in part because her daughters needed her and in part because of the tender nursing she received from her close friend Hertha Ayrton. She did little to manage people’s impressions of her, nor did she seek the support of those who might have defended her. She was a woman who stood largely alone in the face of opposition, criticism, and discrimination. Fortunately, her scientific contributions were so indisputable that they were readily assimilated and used by others because of their enormous benefits. Curie’s separateness had enabled her to conceive and pursue scientific paths of which most other women at the time would not have dreamed; her separateness gave her the strength and resolve to continue on her path even when many people were against her. However, she also paid a significant emotional toll for her separateness, in part because she did not live in a time or place that embraced unconventional women.