The Small Group An Article by James Mulholland jmulholland.com Lying somewhere between a club and a loosely defined set of friends, the SMALL GROUP is a repeated theme in the lives of the successful. Benjamin Franklin had the Junto Club, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had The Inklings, Jobs and Wozniak had Homebrew. Around a dozen members is the sweet spot of social motivation: small enough to know everyone, yet large enough that the group won’t collapse if one or two members’ enthusiasm wanes; small enough that you are not daunted by competing with the whole world, yet large enough that you still need to be on your toes to keep up. Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One SeesMutual appreciationSceniusTossing an idea around teamworkcreativityinnovationcollaboration
Total collaboration The process of designing a product at Apple was integrally related to how it would be engineered and manufactured. Ive described one of Apple's Power Macs. "We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential," he said. "To do so required total collaboration between the designers, the product developers, the engineers, and the manufacturing team. We kept going back to the beginning, again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts?" Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs Like designing things for the first time