[codeonfire]

It's not surprising if you understand academic politics. If you go to many research presentations, you'll be amazed to see people openly deriding the presenter's work to their face. Collaboration is something valued by people who greatly depend on others. So it's normal for most people to think that collaboration is something that is desirable, and it is for the average person. If you are trying to be the world's leading expert in something that no one else understands, depending on others will be an avenue of attack for your detractors. It is far better for a very capable person to take on market forces rather than internal politics.

[sanderjd]

As a disclaimer: I don't claim to understand academic politics. Having said that, I think you need some sort of citation or at the very least a stronger argument to back up the statement that "collaboration is something valued by people who greatly depend on others". To a non-involved observer such as myself, what you're describing (in a positive tone?) just sounds petty and extremely unproductive for everyone involved, whether they're average or "very capable".

[codeonfire]

If one depends greatly on someone else to achieve things, then by definition they value collaboration. I assume we are still talking about academics because there could exist people who simply don't want to accomplish anything and therefore don't value collaboration. It's no secret either that people who are highly capable don't need collaboration except to meet societal and political expectations or to reduce their workload. Again, that follows from the definition of highly capable.

What would be a far more interesting research topic would be to measure negative reaction to any notion that some people can work better alone and any correlations those sentiments might entail.

[sanderjd]

I'm sorry for being dense, but you still haven't convinced me that "people who are highly capable don't need collaboration" is implied by the definition of "highly capable". Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, etc. - these people are all highly capable and all collaborated to achieve their greatest successes. Are we using different definitions of "collaboration"?

Your proposed research topic would be a lot more interesting without the inherent bias you introduce by measuring only the correlations of negative reaction and ignoring any correlations to positive reaction.

[codeonfire]

There's no evidence that their success was due to collaboration and I only said they don't need to collaborate, not that they don't collaborate. On the contrary, in the Bill G and Steve J cases, the general public overwhelmingly attribute the success of their respective companies to the individual and not to their choice in co-founders.

[sanderjd]

I know this is an old thread, but I just saw your response. And... I don't quite know what to say, besides that it seems ridiculously offensive to the hundreds and hundreds of people that made Microsoft and Apple what they are.

I don't know what type of evidence you're looking for, and I don't know what it has to do with co-founders, but it seems pretty obvious to me that one person couldn't have designed every piece of Apple hardware or software or every version of Windows. That's why we invented collaboration - it gives extremely productive people a multiplier.