The Key to Creativity: Solitude or Teams?

Published: January 18, 2012

To the Editor:Alexander Glandien

Susan Cain (“The Rise of the New Groupthink,” Sunday Review, Jan. 15) writes that creative people are more likely to be introverts; that students learn better when alone; and that solitary computer programmers write better code. In each of these cases, research shows just the opposite.

Decades of scientific research have revealed that great creativity is almost always based in collaboration, conversation and social networks — just the opposite of our mythical image of the isolated genius. And educational research has found that deeper learning results when students participate in thoughtful argumentation and discuss reasons and concepts.

The increasing use of collaboration, in classrooms and in the workplace, is not a short-lived fad; it is solidly based in research, and it works.

KEITH SAWYER
St. Louis, Jan. 16, 2012

The writer is an associate professor of education at Washington University and the author of “Group Genius” and “Explaining Creativity.”

To the Editor:

Susan Cain jumbles teamwork, innovation, creativity, brainstorming and public school learning methods into what she calls collaboration, and thereby confuses the point. In the best sense, collaboration is none of the above, and Ms. Cain is wrong to equate it with “groupthink.”

As early as the 1970s, Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann at the University of Pittsburgh identified collaboration as a problem-solving and conflict-resolution technique in which both parties own the issue and seek to fulfill not only their own needs but also those of the other side. It’s the truest of the win-win models. Authentic collaboration has proved to be a powerful means of achieving more than either party might have accomplished solo.

The collaborative process may benefit from the input of individuals who are creative high achievers, but it’s not dependent on them; what’s required are the actual stakeholders whose concerns are threatened by a conflict or a problem. Collaboration is at a far end of the problem-solving spectrum from mind-numbing, creativity-suppressing groupthink.

ED DONOVAN
Pittsburgh, Jan. 17, 2012

The writer is head of program development and assessment at a consulting firm.

To the Editor:

Susan Cain states, “In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question,” suggesting that learning in groups is an obviously bad idea.

Not only are there many ways to learn in groups (aren’t class discussions group learning?), but I would also be very surprised if the students in that class were actually instructed in the manner that she contends. It is a common practice, however, to instruct students learning in groups not to ask the teacher a question until that question has been asked to the other members of that group first.

If the teacher did instruct as presented, then that indeed would appear to be poor practice, but this does not mean that people can’t learn effectively in groups.

LARRY SATCOWITZ
Randolph, Vt., Jan. 15, 2012

The writer is a high school math teacher.

To the Editor:

The creative balance that Susan Cain seeks between individual and group thinking was sought (and found) almost 25 centuries ago by the ancient Greeks. Treasuring personal introspection, they nurtured the life of the individual human mind that gave birth to the rational quest for truth known as philosophy. But, as the symposiums presided over by Socrates show, the Greeks also recognized the synergistic power of multiple minds working together toward a common goal.

Later, the Library of Alexandria became the world’s first think tank as inventive scientists gathered and inspired one another to produce mechanical marvels as dazzling in their own way as the electronic wonders of today.

In the dynamic tension between the individual and the group, the Greeks found the intellectual engine that powered their civilization — and can power ours, if we choose to use it.

STEPHEN BERTMAN
West Bloomfield, Mich., Jan. 16, 2012

The writer is the author of “The Genesis of Science: The Story of Greek Imagination.”