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The Collaborative Primate

By Peter Lloyd

Humans, that is, some humans, like to work together. Others think it’s all about self-reliance, every man for himself, and if you want the job done right, do it yourself. Now there’s research that finds these two approaches not only break along party lines, as it were, but also between species.

Humans prefer to work together to solve problems, chimps don’t. From this, I conclude that cooperation and collaboration mark the leading edge of evolutionary progress.

Early in life, human children show that they prefer working cooperatively. Chimps, on the other hand, prefer to go it alone. Even though they share many of the cognitive abilities that enable collaboration, our simian cousins would rather pull themselves up by their own boot straps. At least they would if they had them.

Collaboration Equals Civilization
Long ago human civilization introduced specialization, which demands cooperation, collaboration, and sharing resources. If you bake the donuts, I’ll build the house, and Joe will entertain us with his big drum later tonight. To make this system work, we had to agree that everybody who helps make the whole mess work shares in the rewards. Enter economics.

Chimps do cooperate to patrol their territory and to hunt. But when it comes to problem-solving, the prefer to work alone. In this first of two National Geographic videos, a chimp will not cooperate with another chimp in order to get food. It will, however, work with a human.

As the narrator explained, chimps not only ask for and accept help from humans, they help humans as well. But not other chimps. It’s as if they’re almost there. They almost get the idea, the idea we got when we began to specialize, help each other, care for our needy, bury our dead, and volunteer for public service.

Of course, there’s a species in between humans and chimps in the cooperation chain of command.

Collaboration Drives Creativity
Cooperation not only made civilization possible, it accelerated our creative progress. We know that we learn better when we study together. We solve problems better together. As a brainstorming facilitator, there’s no doubt in my mind that people generate more ideas and better ideas when they work in small teams. And despite the examples of solo creative breakthroughs, the idea of the Lone Inventor remains largely mythical.

Besides, no one works alone. It may appear that we do, because we’ve made our support systems invisible. You flick a light switch and the room is illuminated. Turn the tap and out comes the water. So much for rugged individualism. You can’t do a thing that does not depend on the work of others. Collaboration is king. Or as Red Green reminds us, “We’re all in this together.”

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Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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