Dear Susan Cain,

            I think your article “The Rise of the New Groupthink” is a little exaggerated.  Maybe groupthink is being honored in more workplaces, but I don’t think solitude is completely outdated.  Plus, most great ideas come from someone’s own idea, then collaborated with other’s original ideas to form a great end product.  Creativity may be best when people work alone, but I think teamwork is always great because everyone could have their own greatly creative individual ideas and once they all collaborate they can make something even better.  Some of my classes practice this technique when wanting us to work in groups, they first give us time to work alone and come up with our own ideas, so when we work together we can combine them all and talk about them to see if we can find the pros and cons in everyone’s ideas to make a team decision.  This way, it eliminates the “groupthink” aspect so we all start with our own ideas and make something better instead of starting together as a group and one person taking over with all the rest being submissive.  I understand your idea that we should all work alone if we want to find our best work and best ideas, like the examples you gave in your article about Mr. Wozniak and what he said in his memoir.  But then again, I think working solo only works to an extent, then once you’ve finalized all of your individual projects, you can combine them.  I’m all for teamwork, and like they say, there’s no I in team.

-Gabby