If you’ve worked in a small group in a class, as part of a team at work, you know what happens. In spite of the best efforts of the committed, there’s always someone who steps up and does a little more. On the one hand, you’re grateful when you’re on the receiving end. You realize, “Thank goodness for this person who stepped up in a way that I found unimaginable.”

Image source: JD Hancock, Flickr

We each have our superpower, that one area we are creative geniuses. Sometimes it is at work, sometimes not. The rest of us are left feeling, “Why can’t I do more, or be more effective?” As a leader, you try to remove the obstacles that block people moving forward to embrace their superpower.

That’s why I was intrigued by Scott Young’s summary of Dean Simonton’s Greatness. Scott writes:

Who makes history and why? Psychologist Dean Simonton surveys a vast scientific literature on the contributions of famous artists, scientists, politicians and leaders.

Simonton finds that career productivity exhibits a characteristic shape. Output rapidly accelerates starting at career onset, followed by a peak and more gradual decline. The sharpness of the peak is field-specific, with poets and mathematicians both rising and falling faster than novelists or biologists.

Quality and quantity are highly correlated in creative work. The best scientists, authors and artists are also the most prolific. 

Price’s Law puts this observation in mathematical language: half of the creative output will be produced by the square root of the number of researchers. To illustrate, in a group of 100 scientists, this equation predicts half of the papers will be published by only ten researchers.

It’s Price’s Law that captures my attention. Half of the creative output will be produced by the square root of the number of researchers. If you work on a small team, say 5 people, you can find the square root of 5 (which is ~2) to discover how many people are producing the most work. Am I reading that right?

If I am, that suggests to me that it’s perfectly OK to not get mad about people who don’t produce much on your team. Just realize they won’t be and reward the square root people who are prolifically creative.An alternate perspective, perhaps as flawed as mine, is to assemble people have identified that area of creativity and turn them loose. Does that work?

I don’t know.