The Scene of Brilliance
Where does genius come from? Is it an innate quality of exceptional individuals? Perhaps in some instances. But there is another kind of genius that emerges through the exchanges of people in a special place - a pub filled with poets, the coffee house at the edge of campus, or Silicon Valley.
This notion of genius emerging on “the scene” has been dubbed scenius by Brian Eno. Learn more about it here.
(Thanks to Rikard Linde for passing the link along.)
Here’s an excerpt:
The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:
• Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
• Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
• Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.
I think there is some merit to this idea. The scene at the Rockridge Institute was quite stimulating, especially when a “random meeting” would emerge out of a question from one researcher to another. Pretty soon there were five people sitting around the table - as passersby got sucked into the conversation - and myriad insights would fly into the light.
This is a special case of the wisdom of crowds where the cultural environment itself is so fertile that new ways of thinking emerge from no one in particular. Many of the ideas I have now could not have come about through solitary introspections. They were incubated over the 15 month period of immersion in such a stimulating environment.
Of course, these scenes are difficult to engineer. Top-down controls do as little in this context as they would in a garden. The dynamic requires ongoing growth in fruitful directions that are typically impossible to predict ahead of time. Yet, they still emerge on occasion when the conditions above are met.
Makes me wonder how such scenes might emerge around entrepreneurial efforts…
