Mountains, Monasteries, and the Metropolis.
If you want to be original and challenge convention, you are better off working alone, going off to the Mountain (metaphorically). But at a certain point, you will have drunk a little too much of your own Kool Aid, and you need a community that is congenial and understands you well enough to give you honest feedback. That is the Monastery, enabling you to cultivate your ideas in a community. When you are certain that your ideas are robust & correct, you take them to the Metropolis where everyone is out to kill you.
Machinations of a creative workflow inspired by an institution I am dying to visit, be a part of (the hallmark of a Polymath's true North🙂), The Santa Fe Institute.
"The development of an idea is a transit from the deliberative solitude of the Mountain, into the collaborative fraternity of the Monastery, to be finally delivered to the diverse appetites of the Metropolis. Each place corresponds to the needs of a creative stage: contemplation, conversation, and commerce."
I am particularly fond of the last sentence in that excerpt. More below: