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The Ripple Effect

Collaboration and the Dynamics of Giving and Taking Credit

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.

—John Andrew Holmes, former U.S. representative and senator

You probably don’t recognize George Meyer’s name, but you’re definitely familiar with his work. In
fact, odds are that someone close to you is a big fan of his ideas, which have captivated an entire
generation of people around the world. Although I didn’t know it belonged to him until recently, I’ve
admired his work since I was nine years old. Meyer is a tall, angular man in his mid-fifties who
sports long, stringy hair and a goatee. If you ran into him on the street, you wouldn’t be able to place
his face, but you might have a hunch that he’s a Grateful Dead fan. You’d be right: in the last five
years of Jerry Garcia’s life, Meyer attended at least seventy different Grateful Dead concerts.
Meyer attended college at Harvard, where he was nearly suspended after he sold a refrigerator to
a freshman and accepted payment, but never delivered it. He was almost suspended again when he
used an electric guitar to shatter a window of a dorm room. A rare bright spot in his college career
was being elected president of the Harvard Lampoon, the famous comedy magazine, but it was
quickly tarnished by an attempted coup. According to journalist David Owen, Meyer’s peers “tried to
overthrow him in a bitter and vituperative internal battle, because they thought he wasn’t responsible
enough.”
After graduating from college in 1978, Meyer moved back home and looked for ways to earn
quick cash. He spent much of his time in college gambling on dog races at a greyhound track, so he
thought he might be able to make a career out of it. He parked himself at a public library and began
analyzing scientific strategies for beating the system. It didn’t work: after two weeks, he ran out of
money.
Three decades later, George Meyer is one of the most successful people in show business. He has