8) Productive and creative collaborations


From hundreds of thousands of hours of data collection encompassing diverse work and social settings, the MIT group found that the most productive and creative collaborative situations include:

Large number of ideas: many short contributions rather than a few long ones;

Dense interactions: a continuous, overlapping cycling between making contributions and very short (less than one second) responsive comments (such as "good," "that's right," "what?" etc.) that serve to validate or invalidate the ideas and build consensus; and

Diversity of ideas: everyone within a group contributing ideas and reactions, with similar levels of turn-taking among the participants. (p. 89)


Pentland, A., (2014). Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread-The Lessons from a New Science, Penguin Press.

photo: wooleywonderworks   flickr