By Kim Yong-seong

A group of astronauts walked into a space shuttle on a cold morning of January, 1986. Among them was Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher who won a ticket to join the Challenger mission, waving at the cameras. Students gathered around the television in school auditoriums and shouted in excitement as they watched the space shuttle lift off. However, 73 seconds later, everyone fell into silence as the Challenger exploded and shattered into pieces, leading to the death of the seven members onboard.

An investigation commission was formed immediately and held a national press conference in response to the situation. Experts promised to investigate the case thoroughly for a clear answer as to what went wrong. It took more than a year and half for people to hear from the commission. It discovered that an O-ring seal on the right solid rocket booster failed at liftoff, thus causing the irreversible disaster.

But going back to the fateful day a year and half earlier, stock investors had already found the cause of the tragic accident. Stock activities that day reflect investors’ knowledge. The share price of Thiokol, the company that built the solid-fuel booster rocket, was down nearly 12 percent at the end of the day. By contrast, the stock price of the three other firms that built other parts of the space shuttle fell only about 3 percent. How could the investors have known Thiokol’s role in the tragedy? Was it a coincidence or a unique revelation on the collective power of people?

Creative power of collaboration

Koreans have long believed that a mere gathering of a group of people cannot achieve anything.
However, in the Internet era, we see more and more cases of this long belief being proven wrong. Creativity is spurred through collaboration, and people call this phenomenon "Group genius." It means that though an average person alone is limited, creativity becomes limitless when you gather different people together. When the group collaborates effectively, it can achieve great results.

Wikipedia is an example of group genius. When Wikipedia was first introduced, Microsoft scoffed at the idea of Internet users voluntarily collaborating to write a full-scale encyclopedia.
However, years later, the global IT Goliath pulled out of the encyclopedia business as its resources paled in comparison to the highly networked group of Davids.

Some experts explain that this new trend has risen due to greater intellectual capabilities of mankind. Contemporary society has access to more knowledge and thinking power than necessary to sustain life. In a world where machines have replaced most physical labor, people now mainly focus on cognitive efforts to survive and prosper. As people begin to share their knowledge with others through collaborative processes, the impossible becomes possible. Individually, we may not be cleverer than our ancestors, but collectively, as a group, we exceed those who have come before us in both knowledge and creativity.

Three keys to unlock the power of group genius

Experts on creativity have paid attention to organizations that successfully nurture group genius and found shared patterns among them.

First, group genius organizations mix people with diverse information and knowledge. Creative ideas emerge when people can look at a situation through unique and different perspectives. Though a single individual may not have a groundbreaking new perspective, put a diverse group of people together and they will surely come up with something unheard of before. Take examples from history as a case in point. More cases of discovery and inventions were reported in cities and countries such as the republic of Florence in the 14th century when foreign trade was encouraged.
These markets were the meeting points for diverse groups of people in which not only did they trade, but also mixed and interchanged their ideas to generate new ideas.

Second, in group genius organizations, information and ideas flow freely like air, and the environment plays a critical role in facilitating that flow. For instance, people tend to exchange ideas more easily in a casual environment such as the cafeteria or by the water cooler. Group genius organizations make effective use of the office space by making it conversation-friendly and encouraging everyone to bounce off and exchange ideas. Some organizations even set up white boards in hallways to have everyone participate in thought sharing and building. This off-line message board practice is said to effectively boost idea exchanges.

Third, group genius organizations are quick to test and leverage ideas. Pixar, the industry leader in digital animation, is known for its principle of the “little bet. Prior to upgrading its projects to a full-scale film, Pixar encourages its animators to work on many smaller projects without the fear of making mistakes. Through smaller efforts and failures, the company finds successful elements in its characters, stories and animation techniques. All throughout, they snowball the small successful elements together, and ultimately win out by coming up with one box office hit after another. The investments that go into the small experiments are justified.

Going back to Thiokol’s fallen share prices on the day that the Challenger exploded, there was already a frenetic conversation among investors about the real cause of the explosion. Through such sources, stock investors had exchanged enough information to pinpoint Thiokol as the cause of the problem. Hence they began selling, which led to the double digit drop.

The myth of the lone genius died long ago. As organizations increasingly seek out to connect diverse people together, some even joke that one third of the R&D budget is spent on researchers' travel expenses. Creative ideas spark when people share information and knowledge. As more Korean companies shift their gear from a “fast follower” to a “first mover” strategy, the creative power of the collective will become an imperative.

Kim Yong-seong is a professor at the Institute of Global Management (IGM).