As a child, I always wanted to be a scientist or an inventor. I envisioned these careers as involving an individual sequstered inside a lab, quietly working away until they changed the world. I thought of Edison, and his efforts to find the best filament for an electric lightbulb, or Nikola Tesla and his efforts to perfect the transmission of electrical energy.
What I ignored was the fact that Edison had a team of researchers working for him, and that Tesla, though brilliant, ended up penniless. Today, it is even more difficult for an individual inventor to change the world. Teamwork is the key; most of the simple inventions have already been invented.
How, then should an iconoclastic person such as myself survive in the 21st century? Most teams are not highly creative, but they are good at taking core ideas and expanding upon them to deliver something that can stand on its own. The problem is that they can also stifle good ideas if they don’t have the right mix of people on them.
The answer is to combine and effective team with time for creative thought and rumination. Taking those creative ideas and writing them down, followed by their development by a team of builders can be effective. Every team should have a note-taker/documenter whose sole job is to record and edit the creative process as it happens. In this way, a creative spark is struck, and before it is extinguished, it is blown into a small fire and stored in a tinder bundle (by writing it down). The bundle containing the spark is then applied to some fuel (the resources and office staff) and people (the builders) blow on it until a full fire develops.
To take the metaphor even further, all we need now is some good flint to make generating the sparks easier!