Thanks, Harold, for this fine post crystallizing some of your evolving thinking on successful working groups and collaborations.

The knife edge within the workplace between innovation and continuity creates a push-pull mentality of "Do something new but do it our way, i.e. as it's always been done." As Clay Shirky reminds us in "Here Comes Everybody": “The systemic bias for continuity creates tolerance for the substandard.” And Nabokov points out that "Curiosity is subordination in its purest form."

I find Vera John-Steiner's work on creative collaborations quite helpful because she not only speaks to the need for a flow of new ideas into the mix, but to the all-too elusive combination of "sustained time and effort. [Successful creative collaboration] requires the shaping of a shared language, the pleasures and risks of honest dialogue, and the search for a common ground.” I think the words "risks" and "search" are crucial, for they imply an ongoing friction of which you speak that does indeed spark creativity, passion and curiosity.