WEBVTT

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[Collaborative Genius]

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When you look at partnerships, first you 
think of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

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Steve Jobs, a great marketer, the person
with the design sense, and the flare.

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Wozniak, who could take very very few microchips
and make an amazing circuit out of it.

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You always need to team people who have great
vision with people who know how to execute things.

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That's even true of the original computers.
People like Presper Eckert, a great engineer,

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working with a visionary like John Mauchly.

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These names aren't know to as many people,
because they weren't single individuals

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that you could carve on a pantheon,
or put on a magazine cover.

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They were usually teams
of people who worked together.

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Every now and then you run into an innovator
who did not know how to collaborate.

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Somebody like John Atanasoff,
out in Iowa State.

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He was sitting there in a basement,
trying to build a computer

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with just one graduate student helping him.

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And he never was able to get
the punch card burners to work,

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and after he gets drafted into the Navy, 
the machine just sits there in the basement

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until somebody finally throws it away.

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So, if you don't have that team around you,
if you are unable to execute,

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you get consigned to the dustbin of history.

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A great team is one that has 
many players who can play many positions,

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just like a baseball team.

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If you look at the founders of the United States,
you had passionate people, like John Adams

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and his cousin Samuel; you had really smart
people, like Jefferson and Madison;

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and you had people of great rectitude,
like George Washington;

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and, finally, somebody like Ben Franklin, who 
could be the glue who holds them all together.

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And that, to me, is a type of team that's
replicated, whether it's Intel,

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with Gordon Moore, and Robert Noyce,
and Andy Grove;

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or Bell Labs, which has wonderful people who
can do things like be information scientists

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as well as pole climbers with 
grease under their fingernails

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all working together as a team.

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So, when you look at the teams that created
the great innovations of the digital age,

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it was usually not just one type of person,

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but a team that could pull together
with many types of talents.

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[Walter Isaacson — The Innovators]