Books like Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

A book that takes a good, hard look at genius, thus worth exploring. It delivers some interesting observations but isn't a life-changer. Warren Bennis noted similar patterns in the dynamics of several "great groups." His final chapter, "Take Home Notes," pulls these patterns together but was actually the least engaging chapter of the book. It didn't leave me wanting to go out and build my own great group, or even find one. It just felt like, "Hey, some people worth noting have done this great stuff." What I did enjoy about this book was reading how the key players (Disney, Jobs, Carville, Oppenheimer, the creators of Lockheed's SR-71 Blackbird, and Black Mountain) mixed with their teams. Until I'd read this book I'd never even heard of Black Mountain College, though I recognized a name or two of the students who'd attended there and subsequently pushed the edges of their genres. Apparently, this small college produced a disproportionate number of genius students. This was by far my favorite chapter, enough so that I may try to find and read his source material for the school. I was especially intrigued by one of the professors, Josef Albers. Black Mountain's founder, John Andrew Rice, said as he organized the school, "Don't ask me how or why I know it, but I know it. If I can't get the right man for art, then the [school] won't work." (p. 151) So he recruited Albers from Germany (which Albers was all-too-willing to leave, it being the Nazi era and all, and he being married to a Jew). Albers taught art at the Bauhaus in Germany, which shut itself down in 1933 rather than submit to the Third Reich. Albers said his goal at Black Mountain was "To open eyes." He is said to have succeeded in this "to an extraordinary degree. ... Many of those involved with Black Mountain say that their courses with Albers changed their lives." Quoting from pages 153-154, "Albers used a hands-on method to teach key ideas. He believed, Duberman writes [in Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community], that the nature of an object is made up of three aspects: its inner qualities, its external appearance, and how it relates to other objects. Duberman describes how Albers would have the students explore the nature of paper, for instance. Students would fold it, pin it, and create three-dimensional objects with it to discover its strength and other properties. Each student would come up with a personal solution to the problem of a sheet of paper. Albers would critique them, sometimes harshly, as would other members of the class. Finally, Albers would have the students unfold the paper, smooth it out, and return it to its original state. ... Perhaps most famous of all were the exercises he called matiere studies. Students had to find the materials, then explore such questions as how one material could be made to look like another and how surfaces differed, corresponded, and could be combined in interesting ways." Got me thinking.