Obstacles Block the Way to Formulating a Creative Plan
Another consideration when working with others regards our assumptions about their logic. "Sacred" values such as religious beliefs (or conversely prejudices) might reflect either "deontological" (rules based/absolute right and wrong) or utilitarian (relative pros and cons) thinking reflecting either a semantic network or the mesolimbic reward (utilitarian) pathway for such decision making. In a paradigm that involved "selling" one’s personal integrity by signing a paper acknowledging the willingness to kill an innocent person for an agreed-upon price, it was found that the functional MRI activation among those unwilling to sell at any price involved the semantic (left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction) and not the mesolimbic network. The authors inferred that an implication for policy makers could be that, when confronting an opponent with sacred values (such as suicide bombers or other religious extremists), the usual utilitarian logic may not be relevant. Sacred convictions (and equivalent beliefs) should be considered in negotiations, and not simply cost-benefit ratios (Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 2012;367:754-62).
For at least the past 20 years, working with others to solve a problem has often involved electronic communication. Electronic communication can enhance the timeliness of communication, facilitate communication over large distances, and increase synchronous action, which in itself can enhance survival and mitigate risk. Among financial traders, who rely heavily on electronic communication, there is greater risk of losing money when there is greater uncertainty about the market. During such times, survival (that is, not losing money) is facilitated by sharing information so as to help disambiguate information pertinent to market uncertainty. Those traders engaging in instant messaging consequently trade more synchronously during such times and thus lose less money than do those who remain more isolated (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2011;108:5296-301).
While electronic communication has made long-distance collaborations possible, there is still an apparent benefit to proximity. When looking at the impact factor of papers published by Harvard scientists over a recent 10-year period, it was found that the further the distance apart between collaborating authors, whether within a kilometer or within the categories of same building, same city, and different city, the lower the mean citations of the article (PLoS One 2010;5:e14279). Despite this, proximity itself may not be enough. Contrary to popular belief, gathering a group of people together for a brainstorming session has not been found to be effective. Building designs that geographically facilitate strategic encounters of its residents lead to more chance encounters with others of different expertise. In the case of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Building 20, this has been highly effective and may have been helpful in the careers of notable people such as Amar Bose (of the Bose Corporation) and Noam Chomsky.
But plans are only as good as their execution, and next month we shall examine how execution can falter in our creative endeavors.
Dr. Caselli is medical editor of Clinical Neurology News and is a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
