On Topic: Innovators and troublemakers

Alan Turing suddenly is everywhere.

The English mathematician is the subject of a new movie, 'The Imitation Game,” about the cracking of the Nazis' Enigma code machine and which in September won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The stars of that movie, Benedict Cumberbatch (known to TV viewers as one of the latest iterations of Sherlock Holmes) and Keira Knightley, are popping up on radio and TV to talk about Turning.

And this month, Walter Isaacson - author of biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs, among other frighteningly smart folk - came out with 'The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.”

In his book, Isaacson details how Turing was the head of the team during World War II that developed Colossus, and came to be considered the father of the modern computer - those big, hulking things with the giant reel-to-reel tapes spinning noisily in 1960s sci-fi movies as well as the clever smartphones that today dictate much of our lives.

By envisioning a Logical Computing Machine, the author writes that at age 24 'Turing's name became indelibly stamped on one of the most important concepts of the digital age.”

Isaacson notes that innovators - certainly in the super-genius category - aren't always the easiest people with whom to get along. Poet Lord Byron gave only a single speech in the House of Lords, and it was in support of the Luddites who were destroying the newfangled, job-wrecking mechanical looms of the day.

Steve Jobs, brilliant and obsessive, also was famous for not being Mr. Nice Guy.

(Which reminds me of Rita Hayworth's wry comment after divorcing Orson Welles and how difficult it was being married to an acclaimed 'genius.” He was 'crazy like a horse.”)

Isaacson quotes Andrew Hodges, whose own book on Turing describes the man as someone 'slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience.”

In other words, innovators aren't always the most pleasant of co-workers. They can be prickly, competitive - even within their own team - and not good about sharing.

Turing certainly had secrets aplenty of his own, as Isaacson and others point out. He was a homosexual, then a crime in the United Kingdom punishable by imprisonment or, in Turing's case after his hidden life was discovered and he charged with 'gross indecency” in 1952, subject to a series of 'female hormone treatments.”

He even took one mystery to his grave. Legend says he committed suicide in 1954 by biting a cyanide-laced apple - shades of 'Sleeping Beauty.” Isaacson repeats the belief, but biographer B. Jack Copeland, in 'Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age,” claims the half-eaten apple found on Turning's bedside table was never tested for poison.

'The love of a good story filled in the rest,” says Copeland, who devoted the entire final chapter of his 2012 book to disputing that poison-apple notion.

Interesting then, with the deluge of books and presentations and institutions that have been produced during the past few decades, from Peter Drucker onward, on how to spark innovation within companies and organizations, precious little has been offered on how to manage these often challenging innovators we want to inspire and encourage.

True, the Turings of the world are exceptionally rare birds. It's not every day the future creator of the next world-altering concept - a computer, E=mc2 or 'Citizen Kane” - shows up in your human-resources office seeking a job.

But it's also true none of these innovators grew their Big Ideas in isolation. Each had a group to enable them and offer their own contributions - the rest of the gang at Bletchley Park, in Turing's case, or the cinematic talent of ex-wife Hayworth for Welles in 'The Lady From Shanghai.” Today you could have an office or building packed with budding innovators, even if not all of Turing's wattage.

Part of fascination of the recent WGN TV series 'Manhattan” was its portrayal of the huge passel of off-the-charts-brilliant thinkers who toiled on the development of the atomic bomb while hidden away at Los Alamos, N.M.

They say producing innovation can be like capturing lightening in a jar. We also need to learn how not to get burned while holding onto that jar.