Quirky

The Remarkable Story of the Traits, Foibles, and Genius of

Breakthrough Innovators Who Changed the World
Melissa Schilling
Public Affairs, 2018
First Edition: 2018 more...

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 Engaging

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As a teenager, Steve Jobs worked at Atari. He seldom bathed, and he smelled bad, so Atari isolated him from the other employees. As a young man, Albert Einstein
couldn’t get a job in academia; his college professors resented his disrespect for authority. When they didn’t recommend him for a teaching position, he made his
living as a patent examiner. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and numerous lifesaving medical devices, lives in a house with hallways that appear to be mine
shafts. “Serial breakthrough innovators” like Jobs, Einstein and Kamen are “quirky,” says innovation expert Melissa A. Schilling. She examines the lives of
accomplished innovators, discusses why they are special and offers companies practical tips on how to nurture innovation among their employees.

Take-Aways
 Most “serial breakthrough innovators” are misfits, eccentrics, outsiders, kooks, rebels and nonconformists.
 Serial breakthrough innovators often see themselves as different and prefer solitude, social detachment and isolation.
 Yet they have complete faith in themselves and their ability to solve big problems.
 “Genius and mania” define many serial breakthrough innovators.
 These innovators have ambitious goals that they treat as holy missions.
 They are workaholics and derive great pleasure from their work.
 Many serial innovators have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.
 Serial breakthrough innovators require quick, easy access to technological and intellectual resources.
 Nurture and promote your employees’ creativity and innovative potential.

Summary
Most “serial breakthrough innovators” are misfits, eccentrics, outsiders,
kooks, rebels and nonconformists.
To understand what makes serial breakthrough innovators special, consider their individual traits. These prodigious, world-class, “quirky” innovators include:

 Elon Musk – A bookish, nerdy kid, Musk developed his first video game at age 12. By age 28, he was a millionaire. During the next 10 years, he created
the electronic payment system that became PayPal. Musk taught himself rocket science and founded SpaceX, an aerospace transportation services firm
that established the practicality of reusable rockets. Musk helped develop Tesla Motors, which manufactures and sells electric cars. It became “the first
new-car company to go public in the United States in more than 50 years.” Musk constantly attempts the impossible. He doesn’t care whether people
think he should.
 Nikola Tesla – Known as the “wizard genius,” Tesla was responsible for upward of 200 noteworthy innovations, some considered impossible to achieve,
including the first long-distance wireless communication systems, alternating-current electrical systems and remote-control robots. Tesla was an oddball
and social misfit who suffered from mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder and oversensitivity to sensory stimuli. Obsessed with the number three, Tesla
would walk three circles around a building before going inside. His innovative work caused him to experience what he called “continuous rapture.” He
also had neurological disturbances that he described as feeling as if his “brain had caught fire.”
 Albert Einstein – During a four-month period at age 26, Einstein wrote four papers that revolutionized long-established scientific principles concerning
space, time, mass and energy.” His developments in particle physics opened the door for quantum mechanics, which would replace conventional physics.
Einstein always kept himself apart from other people and society. His separateness enabled him to become an original thinker.
 Marie Curie – The woman who discovered radium and the first woman to win a Nobel Prize – twice, in two different fields – preferred isolation
and suffered from chronic depression.
 Thomas Edison – Known as the “Napoleon of invention,” Edison spent most of his life working in his laboratory. He often slept on a lab table. Edison
had only three months of grammar school, but, by age 12, he had read the Dictionary of Sciences, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Hume’s History of England, Sears’s History of the World and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
 Benjamin Franklin – A great American patriot, Franklin had formal schooling for only a few years during his childhood. Yet he was an active inventor,
and he led the development of the Philadelphia Public Library, the implementation of a system for sweeping and lighting the city’s streets, and the
country’s first volunteer firefighting cooperative.
 Steve Jobs – This visionary developer of groundbreaking products, including the iPhone, the iPad and the iPod, drove around with no license plate. He
often parked in spots meant for people with disabilities, and he lived in a house without furniture. Yet Jobs was so brilliantly charismatic and persuasive
that people described him as possessing a “reality distortion field.”
 Dean Kamen – Inventor of the Segway, Kamen also created the first portable kidney dialysis machine, the first wearable drug infusion pump and other
revolutionary devices. He bought his own island and announced that he wanted to secede from the United States to avoid the stricture of its rules.

Serial breakthrough innovators often see themselves as different and

prefer solitude, social detachment and isolation.
Quirky innovators generally crave isolation and are largely social outcasts. Franklin, an accomplished social networker, was an exception. Most are fiercely
independent. They love their work and often toil like maniacs. Serial breakthrough innovators believe in their own abilities, are idealistic and pursue ambitious goals.

“Mr. Edison has few friends. Because of his work, he has had to live a great deal by himself and in himself – shut out from the social contacts open to most men.”
(Thomas Edison’s second wife, Mina Miller Edison)

Many serial innovators, including Franklin and Edison, were autodidacts, that is, self-taught. Often, such thinkers sleep less than average, and they have terrific
memories. Because of their isolation, serial breakthrough innovators don’t care about or buy into conventional wisdom. They think for themselves without limits.

Most serial breakthrough innovators do their best to separate themselves from other people. Einstein lived an isolated life yet eventually became the world’s most
famous scientist. Curie, who studied independently until she went to the Sorbonne, lived what she described as a sequestered, “anti-natural” life. A depressive, she
found contentment in self-imposed isolation.

Yet they have complete faith in themselves and their ability to solve big
problems.
Serial breakthrough innovators are often supremely self-confident people who think big. For example, Musk believes in himself totally. People call him the “walking
moonshot” because of his exuberant belief in his own abilities and his readiness to attempt the seemingly impossible. Psychologists call this attribute “self-efficacy.”

“The life of the serial breakthrough innovator is not for everyone. Many of the factors that helped them change the world in meaningful ways are inimitable, and
many of us would not choose the kind of life they led.”

Kamen, a college dropout, has unbreakable confidence in his reasoning abilities and little interest in the boundaries that constrain other people. Einstein disrespected
authority and other experts, while always believing in himself and his ability to figure things out.

“Genius and mania” define many serial breakthrough innovators.

Serial breakthrough innovators are more intelligent than the average person – and a bit crazier. Tesla exemplified this topsy-turvey mentality. He was brilliant and had
a photographic memory, yet he suffered from serious mental issues, including OCD, mania and germ phobia.

“By embracing weirdness, we might better allow the natural creativity of people to flourish.”

A dopamine imbalance in Tesla’s brain may have turbocharged his creativity. Like most serial breakthrough innovators, Tesla slept less than most people. But his lack
of proper sleep was extraordinary. He averaged two hours a night, and many nights got no sleep at all.

These innovators have ambitious goals that they treat as holy missions.
These inventors also shared idealistic, lofty goals for their innovations – though Edison’s holy grail was profit. They want to solve the world’s biggest problems. For
example, through his efforts to improve society, Franklin believed he was fulfilling his “duty to serve God and mankind.” His faith fueled his determination to
achieve his goals.

“If we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power
is our mainstay.” (Tesla)

Tesla, who developed AC electricity, also incorporated a higher purpose in his motivation. He believed that people needed a safe environment in order to eliminate
income inequality and suffering.

They are workaholics and derive great pleasure from their work.
Serial breakthrough innovators are extreme workaholics. Tesla claimed to have worked from three in the morning until eleven in the evening every day. He would
often work until he collapsed. Edison possessed amazing stamina for constant work in his laboratory. He often insisted that his assistants work all night in his lab as he
did.

“By their very nature, original ideas are often initially hard for others to understand and value.”

Francis Upton, one of Edison’s lab assistants, believed that Edison had little conception of the limits of endurance that constrained other people. Upton felt that
Edison’s physical and mental strength surpassed everyone else’s. Like other serial breakthrough innovators, Edison always dealt with problems and sought solutions
no matter how often he failed. He forced his way to many breakthroughs.

Many serial breakthrough innovators have been fortunate to be in the right

place at the right time.
Consider Marie Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Poland in 1867. Her parents were members of the Polish aristocracy who lost most of their wealth after
Russia invaded Poland that year. Curie came of age when Polish people were always defending their cultural heritage against the Russians. One way her parents
protected their culture was by educating their children in secret about forbidden Polish literature and the sciences. Her father was a teacher who dedicated himself to
teaching all his children, including Marie, and she benefited greatly as a result. Eventually she studied at the School of Sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris.

“Separateness enables inventors to create heterodox ideas, but strong cohesive networks are likely to be better for getting them implemented.”

Curie believed that attaining an education was her patriotic duty. In Poland, she participated in the Flying University, a secret, underground school that provided a
university curriculum to Polish women. This gave Curie entreé to Warsaw’s most intelligent women. They encouraged her to study and learn. This era of “Polish
positivism” encouraged women to educate themselves, and Curie was able to do just that at the right time and in the right place.

Serial breakthrough innovators require quick, easy access to technological

and intellectual resources.
Remarkable innovators succeed when they can operate in a sound, smoothly-running financial system with available capital and an educated populace. In most cases,
these innovators had little personal wealth and no extensive formal education. However, many were avid readers who taught themselves and fashioned their own
idiosyncratic educational programs. All avidly devoured educational content in any form.

“Life gets a lot broader when you realize [that] everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you, and you can change
it.” (Steve Jobs)”

Some innovators had people close to them who could help with their innovations. Jobs had the support of Steve Wozniak, a highly capable engineer. Jobs provided the
crucial vision for their early computers, and Wozniak provided the technical expertise. Access to technological and intellectual resources is paramount to innovators.
Financial resources often may turn out to matter less.

Nurture and promote your employees’ creativity and innovative potential.

You may be able to duplicate the circumstances for your employees that helped these innovators create. Aim to create “situational advantages” and provide resources
that foster innovation. Help your employees challenge current thinking, and let them pursue innovation independently. Innovators’ devotion to separateness enables
them to look beyond common wisdom and to think for themselves. Einstein felt free to conceptualize physics as he saw fit. Musk felt free to pursue the idea of
reusable rockets because he wasn’t part of the space industry. As outsiders, they didn’t feel bound to follow established scientific and engineering dogma.

Empower your employees to develop and submit original ideas. For example, Pixar, the animated film company, fosters innovation by allowing teams to set their own
hours, arrange their own offices, establish their own project management protocols and determine their own meeting schedules.

Give your employees opportunities to work alone. People develop innovative concepts when they are free to entertain outlandish ideas. Creative ideas are fragile;
groups can kill them quickly. Avoid meetings where the purpose is to get everyone to agree. Likewise, encourage the people in your workforce to take risks. Celebrate
“bold but intelligent failures.” Give people access to technological and intellectual resources. The more knowledge your employees have, the better they can use it in
innovative ways.

The same applies to parenting. Many modern parents thwart individual exploration by keeping their children constantly active and engaged in team sports, after-
school classes, and other extracurricular activities. Like innovative adults, children also need time to read, write, experiment and reflect.

About the Author

Melissa A. Schilling, PhD, an expert in innovation, is the John Herzog Family Professor of Management and Organizations at NYU’s Stern School of Business. She
is also the innovation director for Stern’s Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation.