It concerns me that we award managers all the credit for collaborative innovations. History remembers Thomas Edison as a great inventor with 2,332 patents. This

It concerns me that we award managers all the credit for collaborative innovations. History remembers Thomas Edison as a great inventor with 2,332 patents. This is a distortion though. He was mostly a manager, who stamped his name on everything his building of inventors produced. I see the same thing happening with the mythologizing of Steve Jobs as an inventor instead of as a CEO. This "great man" view of history distorts our perceptions. It tricks us into believing any lone person can rise from nothing. The reality is that it takes collaboration, funding, and often privilege. People might be a little happier with their lives if they knew the "great man" concept is just propaganda, and that simply contributing to something great is a worthwhile aspiration. I know I'm happier for discovering this in my mid-life.