The moment you ask for two opinions on something new and interesting that you are doing, it will end up as a watered-down version.

Said Ron while calibrating Signpost 1: Exchanging ideas too early and too often hinders their diversity and potential to innovate.

With Ethan I talked about the various social processes that an idea and the person who comes up with it are exposed to the very moment they decide to share it:

People will probably tell you: ‘that’s a nice idea, but have you thought about all the difficulties’, or ‘it has been tried and failed’.

March’s ability to forget could be a practical solution here. Ethan added, “at the early stages an idea is very vulnerable and can die easily.”

Henry saw things differently. For him, the experiences of others “stretches your imagination” and so exchanging ideas early and frequently is a good thing to do.

Claire told me that it’s not so much about how early or often we share ideas, but about who we share them with: “the trust in the relationship predetermines what will happen to the idea.” Though, she later reflected that while trust might allow the idea to develop, it might not contribute to, nor maintain, its uniqueness.

For Frank it was the type of ‘tie’ in the relationship which contributes to its novelty. In social networks, a strong tie develops when you interact with someone frequently. Frank explained:

In a strong tie, what you know and what they know overlaps a lot, and you’re more likely to have a similar worldview. But people who are far away in your social network, those which you don’t interact much with (weak ties) are less likely to know the same things and more likely to know information which is new to you.

An intriguing example of how interacting with weak ties can promote innovation came during my chat with Kevin where we discussed a study [94] by an economics professor who found that during the alcohol prohibition era in the US there were 8–18% fewer patents in the counties which were under such prohibition law. Less informal interaction at bars, fewer patents.

The researcher then noted that as people rebuilt their networks, they connected with different individuals which in turn lead to new patents in different areas. The study concluded that “while prohibition had a temporary effect on the rate of invention, it had a lasting effect on the direction of inventive activity” [94] – innovation through weak ties.

Miles then told me that he agrees with the ‘too early, too often’ part of the signpost and backed it up with a study [95] which measured a decline in the quality of solutions in group settings. The study suggests that:

Organisations should be redesigned to intermittently isolate people from each other’s work for best collective performance in solving complex problems.

That conclusion is so, so very, close to our signpost that I was tempted to put my feet up and call it the destination of Signpost 1. However, Miles also told me that “we overestimate the value of a novel idea compared to a highly effective idea.” Innovation, he argued, can benefit more from an integrated idea than a diverse one and added:

If we consider innovation as building a product that would have a market success, then novelty on its own is not sufficient.

I heard this too from those at the cold front of delivering ideas, or as Quinn called it “the entrepreneurial approach to ideas”, where the value proposition of the idea needs to be identified almost immediately, quickly followed by the development of a business model. A monumental task that requires early and frequent interactions.

With Alice I talked about brainstorming, which I believe takes us in the opposite direction of this signpost, but Alice identified ‘time’ as a key shared ingredient in both my pilgrimage and brainstorming used to arrive at a good idea.

In brainstorming you start with all the standard, ‘bad’ ideas, but with time, the group runs out of these and starts to build on previous ones and new and better ideas start to come up.

For Uriel it wasn’t about what had been discussed, but about what we share – the idea itself. Not a single part of Signpost 1 was spared. For Uriel:

The issue is that we share ideas which don’t come from a point of diversity. We tend to share ideas that don’t look far enough.

Then Julia, a self-confessed extrovert, told me:

My best ideas come from talking to other people and I share them as quickly as I can. This is my natural way of being and I haven’t stop to think whether that was helping or hurting [the quality of the idea].

That is a short summary of key points from half of the locals that I interviewed. You might recognise some aspects of how you deal with your own and other peoples’ ideas – or you might have a completely different take on Signpost 1. The myriad ways of approaching this signpost were reflected in its calibration. The personal point of view (righthand) had the largest “yes, but…” of all, see Fig. 34.1. And no one thought it was something we should ignore – no circle.

Fig. 34.1
figure 1

Calibration of Signpost 1 – exchange of ideas. Established view (left), Personal view (right)

Full size image

On the other hand, the established view (lefthand chart) is very different and equally important to understand. Claire nicely summarised this stark difference:

The common belief is that collaboration is good for innovation. The earlier and the more often you exchange ideas, the better.

Indeed, many human endeavours – from teams and organisations to crowds and democracies – rely on solving problems collectively [95]. To this end, workplace designers put a lot of effort into creating environments which bring people together. Unsurprisingly, no other issue in the design of workplaces has received more attention than walls to connect (or buffer) workers from each other [96] – with the ensuing passionate debates on open vs enclosed floor plans.

As passionate as those debates are, so too are those on interacting too much. Researchers [97, 98] talk about the undesirable side effects that unrestrained collaboration can create in the workflow of organisations. An example of this is ‘escalating citizenship’, whereby collaborators can become institutional bottlenecks and work does not progress until they have had their say.

Others, like occupational psychologist Adrian Furnham, argue that:

Research shows unequivocally that brainstorming groups produce fewer and poorer quality ideas than the same number of individuals working alone. [99]

In her book Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking [100], Susan Cain strings together a broad discussion on the shortcomings of collective thinking and she might have part of the answer when she argues that it’s the social glue, as opposed to creativity which is the main benefit of group interaction.

Quiet was a very influential book, it gave a voice to the introverts in the workplace (an environment which favours the extrovert) and it didn’t take long for a global furniture manufacturer to develop the, wait for it… Susan Cain Quiet Spaces [101]. This beautifully crafted range of personal environments with frosted glass and acoustic insulation is a practical way to support introspection and Signpost 1.

But here we reach an intersection with other signposts, including number 5: Aloneness needs to be within the ideal conditions of its effects on us (solitude) and the quality of the idea itself. At one point, ideas benefit from being shared and coordinated. But that would take us through another set of trails. We will not follow these and in Chap. 36 All Roads Lead to Rome I will explain why this is not a problem.