Driving Innovation Through Creative Collaboration

In a world of complex challenges, evolving technologies and immense opportunities to improve lives, the importance of working together is essential for innovation. At the heart of solving problems, building communities and enhancing the world lies collaboration.

What Does Every Team Need?

Through the extraordinary lessons and stories from the world’s greatest innovators, our National Inventors Hall of Fame^® Inductees, we know that teamwork is crucial for achieving amazing outcomes. We believe that successful collaboration requires three key components – communication, diversity and critical thinking.

The many remarkable inventors, entrepreneurs and trailblazers who have worked to change the world so often innovate and create through direct collaboration with other great minds, employing diversity, communication and critical thinking. Read on to discover some impressive National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee teams who relied on one another to make their ideas a reality through three crucial elements.

Communication

Communication ensures all team members are encouraged to share their knowledge and ideas. Efficient and productive dialogue was vital for the innovation of excimer laser surgery, the method that would become a standard in vision correction procedures.

“No individual knows everything. But if you can talk to someone with a complementary expertise, and you put your thoughts together, you each have a piece of the puzzle, and then it fits together, and you have an answer that neither one of you, alone, could do. That’s what interdisciplinary work is about.”
– Inductee James Wynne, co-inventor of excimer laser surgery
 

Inductees James Wynne, Rangaswamy Srinivasan and Samuel E. Blum co-invented excimer laser surgery, a technique that became the foundation for LASIK (laser in situ keratomileusis) eye surgery. Wynne, a physicist, joined IBM after earning his doctorate from Harvard University. He then moved to the Watson Research Center in New York, where he was the manager of the laser physics and chemistry group. Here, he met Srinivasan, a physical chemist, who spent 30 years at the research center studying the interaction of ultraviolet light and organic matter. Blum, a chemist and physicist, was the final piece of the puzzle as the trio discovered that the excimer laser, a pulsed gas ultraviolet laser, could create clean, precise cuts, making it ideal for delicate surgeries.

Diversity

Diversity powerfully combines varied experiences, backgrounds, skills and expertise. Unique perspectives were an important part of the success of modified mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.

“You don't want 50 people all who do the exact same thing working together, because if they're doing the exact same thing, then nobody's learning anything and there's no new knowledge. You want people who have different training sets, different ideas, to work together and to introduce their ideas into what's going on, and to help make a hypothesis. Kati and I were the perfect example – immunologist, molecular biologist. It solved the problem.”
– Drew Weissman, co-inventor of modified mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines
 

Inductees Drew Weissman, an immunologist, and Katalin Karikó, a biochemist, started working together at the University of Pennsylvania. Their collaboration began in 1997 and led to the modification of mRNA, a molecule containing the instructions that direct cells to make a specific protein. While unmodified mRNA molecules are unable to slip past the body’s immune system, this team’s modified mRNA could avoid immediate immune detection, so it could remain active longer and efficiently instruct cells to create antigens to protect against severe disease. Weissman and Karikó’s findings in the early 2000s proved especially valuable in 2020 and beyond, making it possible for several billion mRNA vaccine doses to be administered worldwide to combat COVID-19.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking promotes better problem solving and helps groups make strong decisions to meet shared goals. Effective reasoning among team members was crucial for the creation of bend-insensitive optical fiber, improving digital communications around the globe.

“It’s always important for a team to have people with different technical backgrounds and ways of thinking. This is how you get new ideas and opinions, and how you make things happen.”
– Ming-Jun Li, co-inventor of bend-insensitive optical fiber
 

Inductees Ming-Jun Li, Dana Bookbinder and Pushkar Tandon invented bend-insensitive optical fiber. Working as researchers at Corning Incorporated, Li, a physicist, Bookbinder, a chemist, and Tandon, a chemical engineer, teamed up to produce an improved optical fiber that could bend without significant signal loss, transmitting phone calls and data over long distances in locations where optical fiber installation was not previously possible. Li, Bookbinder and Tandon’s bend-insensitive optical fiber could be bent to small diameters and around tight corners, allowing for use around structures like indoor walls and door frames. Their invention has proven key to industries like telecommunications and computer networking, opening up a whole new world in communication for better learning and creativity in science, engineering, art, music, literature, medicine and business.

Discover More Influential Stories

For more on the importance of diversity in STEM, visit our blog.