Individual creativity and group creativity are two different beasts. Consider the mad but brilliant scientist, long deprived of food, sleep, soap, and water, pacing the hallways until the “aha” insight hits at 4 a.m. Say he has just solved a fundamental problem in modern physics concerning the behavior of subatomic particles. If he can demonstrate through a mathematical proof his logic - and if his logic predicts observable data - his tenure worries are probably behind him. True, he must be able to convince one journal to publish his idea. However, even if his idea is not well received by his immediate colleagues, as long as it is recognized by eminent members of the scientific community, his future is relatively secure.

Now imagine an equally gifted budding genius who works for a corporation. She has a significant insight that could revolutionize the business. Unlike the physicist, whose major challenge was to record and publish his mathematical proof, the corporate scientist faces the additional challenges of dealing with co-workers and superiors in the hierarchy who may or may not support her idea (or who may wish to steal or suppress it for nefarious reasons), demonstrating the utility and profitability of her idea to skeptics, proving that the idea can be tested on a small scale, showing that this test will not adversely affect business or alienate customers, and generally shepherding her idea through the quagmire of the business environment.