New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell on collaborative innovation

Gladwell discuses the notion of multiplicity - people coming up with the same ideas at the same time, e.g. Bell's and Gray's telephones - and a group's attempt to simulate the inventive process:

Intellectual Ventures (IV; http://www.intellectualventures.com/) collects great minds in the same place to come up with solutions to big problems.

Have a look.