Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history (and if you excuse the humble brag: a fellow Math alum of my university), showed just how powerful collaboration can be.
While he was a brilliant thinker on his own, Erdős preferred not to work alone. So much so that he didn’t always have a home, rather, he packed his bags and spent much of his life traveling from one colleague’s home to another. Always ready to dive into a new problem with a new group, and greeting each with his famous line: “My brain is open.”
By the time he died in 1996, he had co-authored around 1,500 papers—more than any other mathematician on record. His network spanned over 500 collaborators and linked more than 130,000 mathematicians. As mathematician Béla Bollobás once put it, Erdős had “an amazing ability to match problems with people,” connecting the right minds to the right challenges.
You probably won’t be surprised to hear, but research shows that teams consistently outperform individuals across disciplines, especially when solving complex problems.
On the other side: networks can become echo chambers where bad ideas spread just as easily as good ones. Group dynamics can also stifle dissent, making radical breakthroughs harder. And when too many people share the credit, participation can drop off.
The hard thing isn’t joining networks—it’s knowing when to lean on them, and when to step away and work alone. And so we arrive at the million dollar question: is success determined more by your talent, or rather, wherever you sit on a network?
Sociologist Ronald Burt’s research on “structural holes” indeed suggests that the most innovative people aren’t always the smartest, but rather the best positioned—the ones bridging gaps between disconnected groups. In a study of 17,000 scientists, those who connected previously separate fields produced the highest-impact work, regardless of their raw talent. Simply put: Being in the right network multiplies the reach of your ideas.