Derek de Solla Price was a British physicist and scientific historian perhaps best known for his work on the Antikythera mechanism. After researching scientific papers and their authors, he proposed that in any field half the ground breaking work comes from the square root of the number of participants in the field.
In a company of 100 people, the real work of innovation and improvement is done by just 10. Similarly in a company of 10,000 people, the really key employees number 100.
More recent research indicates that the actual distribution is more skewed than Price hypothesised.
While the maths may remain consistent, the bigger the company the more invisible will be those few people who are the key to improvement.
If you are one of those key people buried in the bowels of a large enterprise not only must you do your regular job, but the extras you do also need to be noticed and the value of that extra effort understood.
If you are the leader of such a business, it is a key task for you to identify nurture and advance the few square rooters you are likely to have as employees. You may find they are the ones causing trouble, refusing to follow accepted but unspoken ‘rules’, questioning the status quo, and experimenting in ways that do not always work.
These square rooters are invaluable.
They are the source of innovation, improvement and long-term productivity.
