When It Comes To Creativity, Are Two Heads Better Than One?
Joshua Wolf Shenk doesn't believe in the myth of the lone genius. "What has one person ever done alone?" he asks NPR's Robert Siegel. "We think of Martin Luther King and Sigmund Freud and Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs as these great solo creators, but in fact, if you look into the details of their life, they are enmeshed in relationships all the way through."
Take Steve Jobs: "Jobs created Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak," says Shenk. "Flash-forward to the end of his life, a lot of the great work at the height of Apple was done with this design guru, Jonathan Ive. That's not an isolated story. That is the story of creativity. It's just not been told well before."
And that's the story Shenk tries to tell in his new book, Powers of Two. He argues that creativity is most commonly the result of two people interacting in a variety of ways: complementary collaboration, mutual inspiration, creative rivalry, whatever you want to call it.
He traces the creative partnerships of all stripes — choreographer George Balanchine and ballerina Suzanne Farrell, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the literary friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the basketball rivalry of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and the airborne partnership of Orville and Wilbur Wright. He talks with Siegel about what's so special about the number 2.