Press Talk: Need help? Get wise guys in a group

I ran into a very wise man this week who said something, well, very wise.

He isn’t a news guy, or an attorney, so that was a good thing. And he isn’t a wise guy like in the “I know people who know people” wise guy.

He’s simply a wise guy.

Anyway, I was hanging with him because it’s always a good idea if you can hang with wise guys who can help you.

And — as mentioned many times in the past — newspapers are struggling today. The Columbian is no exception. Like any other business, we have to have expenses in line with revenues.

The Columbian’s mission is so important that we all must find a way to get through our current struggles.

And “all” really does mean all.

We feel like we represent the spirit of the community. We inform and entertain. We connect you to other readers, other community members and the community itself.

We contribute many different ways to the community as a citizen. We live, eat and play here.

OK, enough of our commercial. Back to the column.

So this wise guy says innovation rarely comes from individual effort or competition but rather from collaboration. He was actually quoting some other wise guy. And the point really struck home.

I figured not only could newspaper types learn from this but, heck, we all could learn from this. After all, it isn’t only newspapers that are struggling.

So I looked up a couple of other wise guys, Karim Lakhani and Ned Gulley.
Gulley has done things like leading the development of the Fuzzy Logic toolbox. (Don’t ask.) He has engineering degrees from Princeton and Stanford.
Lakhani is an assistant professor in Technology Management at Harvard.

Both wise guys spoke to how you get to innovative solutions.

On collaboration: “The myth of the lone genius programmer wrestling the compiler demons in a death match and ultimately triumphing is just that, a myth. Most software development is a collaborative endeavor.”

On questioning someone else’s area of expertise or, as I like to say, “getting into someone else’s pile:.” “Everybody has ownership issues, but for most people this is eased by the returned value of the collaboration. Some people have rather severe ownership issues and complain loudly. But you either get over that or you stop playing.”

On encouraging mavericks and group collaboration: “There is no voting or popularity contests. Things like that drive away the brilliant lunatics. And there is empirical evidence that average groups can outperform super-smart individuals.”

In difficult times, collaborate, seek ideas outside of your inner circle and although one should avoid voting on good ideas, group interaction is a great help.

All the wise guys in the world will thank you.

Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or
lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.