Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar on why startups need “creative conflict”: ‘The day of the lone genius is dead’

The successful startups of the future will be the ones that create open environments and encourage “creative conflict” among team members, says Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar.

And that’s because this “creative conflict” zone, where all employees feel safe to make contributions, is where ideas are born.

The day of the “lone genius is dead”, Farquhar said during a speech in Sydney today at this year’s StartCon startup conference.

Farquhar was speaking about the future of work — a future he believes will be built on strong and efficient teams.

“Teams will be the ones to cure cancer, and they’ll be the ones to colonise Mars,” he said.

Telling the event that one of the key things holding back growing startups is “poor team culture”, Farquhar detailed Atlassian’s efforts to identify the “perfect team”.

The company, which specialises in software for teams, looked at hundreds of company teams across the globe and throughout history, he said.

The team they found was a 120-year-old team of steelworkers in Pennsylvania, which were the subject of a famous experiment and case study. The team specialised and optimised the work each individual did, including discovering the optimal shovel weight, and ended up quadrupling their efficiency. Read more

Dominic Powell - Smart Company - 1 Dec 2017