Chiu On This

The Case for Collaboration

by Frederic Chiu

 

"...And on the topic of mental toolkits. How many different analytical frameworks do you think you actively use? Scott Page shared his research on the importance of diversity in decision making. That is, having a diverse group of people with different mental toolkits. We all use different mental modules to look at the world. Physicists use one set, biologists another, growth or value investors yet another and momentum traders another still. The experiences we have and the environments we find or put ourselves in, affect the mental toolkits (and biases) we develop. Suppose for the sake of illustration that there are only 50 mental modules in the world -ie. frameworks for solving problems. Let's say that Alice knows 20 of them. And let's say that Bob knows 12 of them. What are the odds that Alice knows all the ones that Bob knows? It turns out it's about 4 in a billion shot! With 100 mental toolkits, there are 17,310,309,456,440 ways to combine collections of 10 kits. So what's this mean? It means everyone has different tools at their disposal and that nobody is really smarter than anyone else and collaborations with people that don't think anything like you are likely to yield very interesting results. Nanotechnology in university research labs is the epitome of this. E.O. Wilson called it Consilience. I've referred to it as an inverted Tower of Babel. Whatever imagery you invoke, the blurring of boundaries between disciplines is making for some revolutionary advances-Angela Belcher and her spin-out Cambrios (full disclosure: my firm Lux Capital is an investor) is the most recent and powerful example of this by merging biology with semiconductors."

 

This is an excerpt from a newsletter I subscribe to on nanotechnology. As you may or may not know, I was a computer science student in college, as well as a piano major. Combining disciplines and their ways of thinking has always been my focus, and this explanation, although a bit technical, does show clearly why it works.

It also reminds me of the importance of collaborative work in music. Confronting the musical ideas, the differing work habits and reflexes, and the ear-opening sounds offered by other musicians is where all the ideas that we cogitate in our private work studios finally get tested.

Some ideas work well in a vacuum but fail in practice. Others work in practice but lack the elegance of abstraction. The combination of the two - isolated work and confrontational testing, in that order - seems to produce the most innovative kinds of thinking and playing.

 

What lessons have you learned from another musician, from the process of playing together? What lessons have you learned from another discipline outside of music? I would love to hear from you.

 

Good work!

Frederic

10/22/04