Collaboration between researchers has become increasingly common, enabling a level of discovery and innovation that is difficult to achieve by a single person. But how can one establish and maintain an environment that fosters successful collaboration within a research group? In this case study, I use my own experience when directing the ABC Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. I describe the heuristic principles for setting up a research group, including (i) common topic and multiple disciplines, (ii) open culture, (iii) spatial proximity, and (iv) temporal proximity. I then describe heuristics for maintaining the open culture, such as setting collective goals, including contrarians, distributing responsibility, making bets, the cake rule, and side-by-side writing. These heuristics form an adaptive toolbox that shapes the intellectual and social climate. They create a culture of friendly but rigorous discussion, embedded in a family-like climate of trust where everyone is willing to expose their ignorance and learn from the other members. Feeling accepted and trusted encourages taking the necessary risks to achieve progress in science.

The great problem in writing about Proudhon and his Confessions of a Revolutionary is to find a “bottom line” – an interpretation that does justice to the changing views of this contrarian thinker without losing all coherence. Hyperbole and exaggeration are constants in Proudhon’s writing, but his message is generally moderate. The focus in this chapter is, first of all, on the contrast between Proudhon’s verbal violence and his skeptical and ironic attitude with regard to the views of self-proclaimed radicals. A constant is his rejection of the top-down radicalism epitomized by the “Jacobin socialist” Louis Blanc. In terms of Proudhon’s experience, the important point is that the revolution of 1848 drew him into a new life. It made him a representative of the people and an influential journalist. It made him the butt of attacks but also gave him a wider audience than he had ever previously enjoyed. He became the scapegoat of the right. But after the June Days, he also became the spokesman for “the people” betrayed by the revolution. His Confessions of a Revolutionary is both an account of his own making as a revolutionary and of the unmaking of the democratic revolution.