Quirky: The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World

by Melissa A. Schilling

Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. —Nolan Bushnell

This is an extremely important point—most research shows that we tend to penalize people for crossing boundaries. We discount generalists and are suspicious of people who engage in activities that seem inconsistent with their identity. However, outsiders such as Musk bring an advantage that insiders and industry veterans often lack. Outsiders aren’t trapped by the paradigms and assumptions that become calcified in industry veterans, nor do they have the existing investments in tools, expertise, or supplier and customer relationships that make change difficult and unappealing.

It turns out that most empirical work on birth order has found zero effect on personality or behavior, despite the persistence of the myth!

The innovators displayed some unusual characteristics—quirks—that had important implications for both the ideas they generated and the

intensity with which they pursued them. For example, nearly every innovator I studied exhibited very high levels of social detachment.

Their isolation meant that they were less exposed to dominant ideas and norms, and their sense of not belonging meant that even when exposed to dominant ideas and norms, they were often less inclined to adopt them.

All of the innovators also exhibited extreme faith in their ability to overcome obstacles (what psychologists would call “self-efficacy”) from an early age.

Many of the breakthrough innovators took on such goals because they had such high faith in their own ability to overcome obstacles that they did not buy in to the rules that other people accept as given.

All of the innovators also pursued their projects with remarkable zeal, often working extremely long hours and at great personal cost. Most were driven by idealism, a superordinate goal that was more important than their own comfort, reputation, or families.

Idealism is a very powerful intrinsic motivator that can induce individuals to exert exceptional effort toward a problem. In fact, it may occupy their energy and time to such a level that it causes them to disregard motives that other individuals might find more important, such as the desire for social interaction or leisure.

explain why so many breakthrough innovators have been criticized for abandoning or neglecting their families

Idealism helps focus innovators by making their long-term purpose very clear, helping them to make choices among the competing demands of their attention. Having lofty superordinate goals, such as Tesla’s desire to achieve global wireless transmission of energy and to free mankind from physical toil, or Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars, gave these innovators a drive and single-mindedness that helped them avoid getting caught up in other interesting problems. They often led their lives as if they had blinders on to keep their attention locked on target. It...

Idealism was not the only force that drove the innovators. Most of them also worked so hard and so tirelessly because they found work extremely rewarding. Some had an extremely high need for achievement (a personality trait associated with a strong and consistent concern with setting and meeting high standards, and accomplishing difficult tasks), so they took great pleasure in amassing accomplishments. Many also appeared to experience the pleasure of “flow” from working incredibly hard

understanding the innovator’s sense of separateness points out the importance of giving people time alone to pursue their own interests and form their own ideas. It highlights how dangerous norms of consensus are to innovation and reveals the advantages of helping people to embrace their weird sides. People also find it illuminating—and often a relief—to see just how many innovators did not do well in school precisely because of their creativity or their tendency to challenge rules. A surprisingly large portion of the breakthrough innovators have been autodidacts—self-taught people

Every breakthrough innovator studied here demonstrated extraordinary effort and persistence. Most worked extremely long hours, forfeiting leisure, sleep, and time with their families in single-minded pursuit of their mission. Many stuck doggedly to a solution that others had deemed irrational or doomed.

Where does such fierce commitment and energy come from? Chapters 4 and 5 show that idealism, need for achievement, unusual energy levels, and “flow”

being at the right place at the right time still matters.

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. —Albert Einstein

that sense of separateness is usually sharply discernible by both the innovator and those around her, and it typically emerges quite early in life.

When people see that brilliantly successful people drop out of school, many infer that education had nothing to do with their success or was even an impediment. However, that is far from the case. All of the breakthrough innovators I studied invested heavily in self-education. They were avid consumers of knowledge, but they followed their own rhythms rather than an instructor’s pace. They went deeply into a topic or broadly across topics they chose rather than following the path of a syllabus. They were fueled by intrinsic motivation—a true love of learning—even if they had no love for school.

Brainstorming groups have been extremely popular in both businesses and business schools, and doubts about brainstorming’s efficacy border on heresy. However, dozens of subsequent laboratory studies found results opposite to Osborne’s claim: brainstorming groups produced fewer ideas, and ideas of less novelty, than the sum of the ideas created by the same number of individuals working alone.

Three theories have emerged to explain why brainstorming groups are less productive than people working alone. First is the free-rider issue: the possibility that some people may shirk when others in the group start generating ideas. Second is evaluation apprehension.

The third explanation is production blocking. As people take turns voicing their ideas, those bringing up the rear may forget their ideas before having a chance to voice them.

Together, then, these studies show that brainstorming groups diminish creative outcomes because we lose our ideas when others are talking, and we do not express our most novel ideas because we worry about what others will think.

Overall, these studies found that when groups interactively ranked their “best” ideas, they chose ideas that were less original than the average of the ideas produced and more feasible than the average of the ideas produced. In other words, people tended to value feasibility more than originality. If a brainstorming group is intended to elicit novel ideas, asking groups to select and submit their best ideas is not the way to achieve that outcome. This also highlights the importance of both the breakthrough innovator’s tendency to have different beliefs about what is possible and the breakthrough innovator’s willingness to pursue projects even if they have a high likelihood of failure—

THE INNOVATOR’S SENSE OF separateness can also give rise to a sharp tendency to disregard or rebel against rules.

Challenging norms and paradigms. A sense of separateness helped the innovators to become original thinkers, freeing them from the constraints of accepted, or acceptable, solutions and theories.

Providing time alone. It should also be clear that all children need periods of quiet solitude and should be encouraged to read, write, and experiment with things that reflect their personal interests—it helps them develop their ability to think and create and to define what they believe about how the world works.

Filling up a child’s life with team sports, after-school classes, and other extracurricular activities can be extremely valuable for developing social skills or other capabilities, but it should be balanced with the child’s need to reflect. Furthermore, a child’s nature should inform this balance.

When I give presentations about my research on breakthrough innovators, the people in the audience often find it a relief to see just how many innovators did not do well in school precisely because of their creativity or tendency toward rule challenging. A surprisingly large portion of breakthrough innovators were autodidacts and excelled much more outside the classroom than inside. Although many people will have heard anecdotally that some innovators did not do well in school, the stories here show why the innovators such as Edison, Kamen, and Einstein did not flourish in school and why they were successful anyway. Some people respond well to structure, but others do much better in a more fluid educational curriculum where they can choose both the direction and pace of their study. I have watched parents become animated and nod eagerly as I described how the very traits that make some people creative also make them struggle with the classroom environment. At the end of my presentations, mothers and fathers have often come up to me to talk about concerns they have had with their children’s social development or school performance and about how valuable it was to see that a sense of separateness can have a positive side. They make a breakthrough of their own when beginning to understand the benefits of embracing their child’s nature and helping her flourish because of it rather than in spite of it.

Studying these innovators also reveals that when managers want employees to come up with breakthroughs, they should give them some time alone to ponder their craziest of ideas and follow their paths of association into unknown terrain. This type of mental activity will be thwarted in a group brainstorming meeting. Individuals need to be encouraged to come up with ideas freely, without fear of judgment. In both organizations and educational settings, working in teams has become a norm. Teamwork can be very valuable, but to really ensure that individuals bring as much to the team as possible—especially when the objective is a creative solution—individuals need time to work alone before the group effort begins. They should be encouraged to commit their ideas to paper and to flesh each of them out in at least a rudimentary way before they are at risk of being extinguished by social processes. A creative idea can be fragile—easily swept away by the momentum of a group conversation. Almost every team suffers from some degree of groupthink; individuals who are more outspoken or who have forceful personalities can dominate the conversation and the decision making. They can herd a team onto a particular trajectory without even intending to do so. A little isolation and solitude can give other individuals a better chance to develop their creative ideas.

The benefits of isolation can also apply at the team level. Ideas compete for acceptance in firms, and if exposed to competition too early may be killed off before they have had time to develop. An idea that initially seems a bit better than others can sweep through an organization, killing off competing ones that could ultimately be better with some development. The result can be a “monoculture” where there is too little variety left in an organization to generate new solutions.

Research spanning fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, small-world networks, “skunk works” in innovation, and organizational learning have all shown that dividing the organization into subgroups and buffering them from one another can help to generate more innovation.

For example, it can be advantageous to give R&D teams some physical and cultural distance from the larger organization to prevent the paradigms of the larger organization from quashing the R&D division’s heterodox ideas.

Building self-efficacy. One of the most powerful ways to increase creativity—and other positive outcomes—at both the individual and organizational level is to help people build their sense of self-efficacy.

To help people to find their own early wins, we can encourage them to take risks by lowering the price of failure and even celebrating bold-but-intelligent failures.

Inspiring grand ambitions. The powerful role of idealism highlights the value of cultivating grand goals in the organization that people find personally meaningful. For example, Bristol-Myers Squibb has a slogan referring to “extending and enhancing human life,” and its mission is “To discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases.” Google’s well-known mission is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” These lofty goals, if well ingrained throughout the organization, can become an organizing principle that shapes employee behavior even without direct oversight or incentives. When those goals have a social component that employees embrace as being meaningful or intrinsically valuable (such as improving people’s quality of life), that intrinsic motivation can increase the amount of effort they invest in their activities. Similarly, nurturing idealism in children increases their likelihood of embracing a work ethic, living a purposeful life, and finding their accomplishments more meaningful and satisfying.

Finding the flow. If managers can tap into people’s intrinsic motivators—those rewards that activate their need for achievement or the activities that enable them to experience flow—it should increase innovation and productivity for the organization while simultaneously increasing the satisfaction of the employee. To do so requires both self-awareness on the part of the employee about what she finds intrinsically motivating and enjoyable, and a willingness on the part of the manager to personalize the employment experience.

Outsiders are important to innovation; they often operate in fields where they are highly motivated to solve problems in which they are personally invested. They often look at problems in different ways from those who are well indoctrinated in the field, and they may question (or ignore) assumptions that specialists take for granted. This does not mean that specialized training is unimportant for innovation—specialized scientists account for a very large portion of both incremental and breakthrough innovation—but it means that we do not want to foreclose the opportunities that can arise from enabling nonspecialists to engage in science.