What If Adding People Actually Reduces Innovation?

“Large teams solve problems; small teams generate new problems to solve.” — Jeanne Brett and Dashun Wang, summarizing their analysis of 65 million papers, patents, and software products

I’ve been deep into research for the first book in the Built for Turbulence series, specifically looking at the differences between “small errors” (which we want) and “large errors” (which can kill us). Or, in the words of my current subtitle draft: “The Art of Learning Faster Than the World Can Change.”

In the process, I came across a research paper from Jeanne Brett and Dashun Wang (whom I have been following for quite a while now – his research is deeply insightful) on the impact of team size on innovation. Titled “If you want creativity, keep the team small”, it explains exactly why that well-funded, twenty-person “innovation task force” you launched last quarter feels like it’s wading through molasses.

We have a default assumption in business: If a problem is big, the team solving it must be big. In effect, we treat headcount like horsepower – add more engines, get more speed. But the data shows that we are wrong. In fact, we aren’t just wrong; we are doing the exact opposite of what the physics of innovation requires.

When Brett and Wang analyzed over 60 years of data – covering everything from Nobel-winning physics to software code – they found a stark inverse relationship. As team size goes up, “disruptiveness” plummets. Large teams are fantastic at developing existing ideas (polishing the cannonball). But small teams are the only ones disrupting the field (inventing gunpowder).

It all comes down to the Ringlemann Effect: Max Ringlemann was a French agricultural engineer in 1913 who asked people to pull on a rope, tug-of-war style. He found that one person pulls at 100% capacity; add seven more people, and the individual effort drops to roughly 50%. It’s not just laziness (or “social loafing,” to use the academic term); it’s a coordination tax.

In your innovation teams, this manifests as the “common knowledge effect.” In a large group, people instinctively drift toward discussing what everyone already knows because it feels safe and builds consensus. Unique, weird, potentially disruptive ideas – the “small errors” that lead to breakthroughs – get suffocated because they require explanation and risk. In a large team, you don’t get a debate; you get a Poisson distribution where two loud people do all the talking and eighteen people nod while checking their email.

Here’s how to overcome this: Look at your strategic initiatives – are you trying to execute and scale a known solution? If so, by all means, bring in the army. Large teams optimize, they stabilize, and they get the job done. But if you are looking for the next curve – if you are trying to find a new problem to solve – you need to ruthlessly cut the invite list. You don’t need a committee; you need a commando unit, a team small enough to share “tacit knowledge” without scheduling a Microsoft Teams call. You need a group where there is nowhere to hide, so everyone pulls the rope.

As Brett and Wang have shown us, innovation isn’t a function of budget, but a function of intimacy.

@Pascal

P.S. This is our last Tuesday Briefing until after the holidays. 🤗 Happy holidays and a fantastic start to the New Year, everyone!