Creator vs. parasite. Which are you?

The individual against the collective is described eloquently by Howard Roark. Think what you will of the controversial politics of Ayn Rand but haven't we all been a bit Roarkish in our working life? He states the obvious--there is no such thing as a collective brain.
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I remember working on a particularly contentious advisory council meeting. The topic was deemed by the physicians present as disagreeable and self-serving to the pharmaceutical company's interests. The moderator and facilitators were a bit abrasive and tone deaf to the feedback from the highly experienced group from leading academic centers.

When it came time to write the report there were a lot of valuable insights needed to be heard by the pharma chain of command. Surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly they were edited out of the final document. Heated debates were wordsmithed to appear to be agreements, health outcomes and economics research discussions were not clearly understood and the pharma attendees skewed the findings in their favor.

Quite often we may indeed hand in our perspective of the task at hand only to be admonished that further edits will be required to "fine tune" the content to meet a particular culture or internal aesthetic. Most of the time we just move onto the next opportunity--occassionally we might think of Mr Roark's solution and slowly smile.

The next time you do your best work and are confronted with the age old adage--"But we have never done it this way"--you dear reader, have become a creator.

Thoughtful discussions about content development and outcomes analytics that apply the principles and frameworks of health policy and economics to persistent and perplexing health and health care problems...

Creativity--your choice!

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The cuckoo wasp...(they lay their eggs in the nests of other species)