Making a Scene

Brian Eno coined the term "scenius" to describe the particular type of brilliance that emerges from small groups of people on the periphery of mainstream culture. It's a clever and useful neologism. Anyone who has been a part of one of these scenes (or studies them) immediately recognizes the truth of the term. Exceptional groups make what's new and drive what's next. And it's true across the arts, sciences, and most any other human endeavor. We are truly social animals, especially in our creative breakthroughs.

Scenius goes against the popular mythology of the lone genius by recasting high performance as a communal endeavor. Nowhere is the myth of the genius more pervasive than science. While there are bright minds and brilliant individual insights in all fields of science, the narrative is worth updating. Understanding science through the lens of scenius rather than genius could be more productive.

Our team has been using the idea of “science scenius” to help inform the design of our new funding programs. And we’re not alone. Various new organizational experiments are actively trying to create these dynamics to help more risky research and development get off the ground and into the world.

Defining Scenius

Scenius has been written about extensively. Kevin Kelly's Technium post on the topic is canon. He describes the common aspects of these groups as: 

•  Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.

•  Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.

• Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.

•  Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.

More recently, Packy McCormick wrote a series of Substack posts building on the writing of Kelly and adding his own perspective about the current Web3 atmosphere. McCormick's writing doubles as a good primer and overview of scenius as well as an example of the type of “this changes everything” mania that participants actually feel. He's in it. I once wrote a whole book, Zero to Maker, about my experience during the Maker Movement of the early 2010s. It's easy to want to evangelize for a thriving scene — it’s intoxicating.

Scenes never change the world as much as it feels like they will in the moment. Ultimately, idealism turns out to be a finite resource. The euphoria wears off. The band breaks up. But great scenes always matter, as each sedimentary layer of culture is laid down for the next group to build upon. Civilization and culture rely on these waves of scenius to drive progress and change.

Despite the importance of scenes, the conclusion of Kelly and others is that the process of creating them is totally unpredictable and largely unmanageable. 

“Although many have tried many times, it is not really possible to command scenius into being. Every start up company, or university would like their offices to be an example of scenius. The number of cities in the world hoping to recreate the scenius of Silicon Valley is endless, but very few have achieved anything close. Innumerable art scenes begin and vanish quickly. The serendipitous ingredients for scenius are hard to control. They depend on the presence of the right early pioneers. A place that is open, but not too open. A buffer that is tolerant of outlaws. And some flash of excitement to kick off the virtuous circle. You just can’t order this.”

Warren Bennis wrote the book Organizing Genius to describe the concept and tell the stories of these “Great Groups,” as he called them, emerging in various organizations and institutions: Lockheed's Skunk Works, PARC under Bob Taylor, the Manhattan Project. 

“Something happens in these groups that doesn’t happen in ordinary ones, even very good ones. Some alchemy takes place that results, not only in a computer revolution or a new art form, but in a qualitative change in the participants. If only for the duration of the project, people in Great Groups seem to become better than themselves. They are able to see more, achieve more, and have a far better time doing it than they can working alone. Groups of the stature of PARC in its glory days and Disney Feature Animation are rare. But they could happen far more often than they do.”

Like Kelly, Bennis describes important commonalities among the disparate groups, ranging from thinking they are on a mission from God to seeing themselves as winning underdogs. 

We can observe the ingredients, but we don't know the recipe. I agree with Bennis' optimistic take: scenius could emerge more often, if only we understood its catalytic process. The closest anyone has come to a general theory of how these groups ignite is Michael Farrell in Collaborative Circles. In addition to the common characteristics of the groups, he also describes the common life cycles, from formation to dissolution and reunion. Farrell goes furthest in offering a prescription for scene-making: 

First, be on the lookout for cultural turmoil, ideally in a "magnet place that is overloaded with novices, and that is demographically diverse..."

Next, find the outcasts, ideally "a set of highly ambitious novices who are marginalized because of their gender, ethnicity, theoretical orientation, or some other characteristics." 

Then empower individuals as network catalysts, or "gatekeepers" as Farrell calls them. They're the recruiters: "One by one, the gatekeeper begins to court some of the most talented and ambitious people in the network."

From here, the new group takes on a life of its own. The trajectories are wild and unpredictable. Sometimes they take, other times not. But scenius always begins on the fringe. To me, the lesson is simple: if we want more world-changing groups, we should foment many small rebellions. 

Wanted: Rebel Scientists

Science is organized skepticism. The institution is designed for disagreement, argument, and constant revision. Thomas Kuhn described the process in The Structures of Scientific Revolutions using the lens of paradigm shifts; periods of "normal science" are punctuated by moments of revolutionary science where entire ways of understanding are rearranged and updated. 

Despite the self-correcting nature of science, its current institutions have grown less tolerant of dissent. Nowhere is that more evident than the science funding environment. You're free to have new and different ideas, but you're less likely to find financial support to pursue them. 

A new paper from the economist Chiara Franzoni and her colleagues summarizes their years of research into the economic forces shaping scientific careers and the nature of scientific risk-taking. They combine this with an exhaustive literature review of alternative ideas about how to fund and incentivize scientists. The paper is organized around a deep-dive interview with Dr. Katalin Karikó, whose research on the properties and mechanisms of mRNA enabled the COVID-19 vaccines. Their findings are concerning. Not only is it hard to fund risky ideas, but early-career scientists are being shaped by incentive structures that nudge them towards evermore conventional paths. 

The solution isn't obvious, either. Franzoni and colleagues note the limited evidence from alternative approaches. It's a Catch-22. Funding agencies hesitate to make risky bets on new funding models because they don't have enough data on their efficacy. Private philanthropists run into similar problems which seem to stem from the limitations of decisions made by committees. The peer-review process dominates as a funding allocation mechanism, and we finally have data and literature that points to its systematic bias towards conservative allocation. Of course, those results aren't surprising to anyone who's ever had to make a decision on a large committee. It squashes the oddballs. 

Franzoni and others conclude with a plea for alternatives. The moment demands experimentation. The world cannot afford to miss out on supporting the next Katalin Karikó. 

My takeaway from the scenius literature is these new funding models should focus on the funding dynamics as much as mechanics. Beyond just the ideas that get funded, these programs should consider the relationships that are formed as a result. The turning point for Karikó came after she teamed up with Drew Weissman at the University of Pennsylvania and the two used funds from one of Weissman's existing (but unrelated) NIH grants to work on mRNA vaccines. New funding experiments should create more connections and momentum at the fringes, and allow enough slack for those groups to wander off in new directions.

The explosion of alternative models and designs for research institutes is an exciting antidote to institutional risk aversion. For a reference guide to these ongoing organizational experiments, I recommend following Sam Arbesman's Overedge Catalog. At the center of the action is the concept of the Focused Research Organizations (FROs), a discipline-spanning, mid-sized team gathered to address well-scoped, time-bound technical challenges holding back various scientific disciplines. The idea was proposed by Sam Rodriques and Adam Marblestone in September of 2020 and hit a strong chord with scientists and funders alike. Marblestone credits his experience in a wide range of productive scientific scenes as inspiration for the new model. 

In the span of a year, it's gone from concept to reality, with Marblestone leading and advising a handful of FRO derivatives ranging from mapping brain architecture to cultivating non-model organisms. Each one is an opportunity to test and learn better ways to create science scenius. 

This is our goal with the "Science Angel" model as well. By giving individual scientists budgets and discretion to support projects and people they believe in, we're moving funding decisions away from centralized committees and increasing the possibility of new groups or partnerships. We're trying to create lots of Farrell's gatekeepers. 

The goal for everyone exploring these new models — FROs and Science Angels and everything in between — should be to learn. Our lessons will certainly produce something of transferrable use to the larger funding agencies. The best part about this moment of wide experimentation is the openness. Everyone's sharing ideas and nudging each other on. It has all the makings of its own sort of meta-science scenius. Indeed, it is starting to feel that way.