It’s often said that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Music titan Quincy Jones’s early collaboration with a teenaged Ray Charles opened the door to a world of music—and partnership opportunities. Jones lent his Midas touch when teaming up with notables such as film directors Sidney Lumet and Steven Spielberg, singer Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson, for whom he produced Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. Perhaps the 28-time Grammy winner’s most influential collaboration was “We Are the World,” the humanitarian anthem Jones arranged. He worked with more than 40 singers to produce the international hit that raised millions of dollars for famine relief.
Former Wells Fargo executive John McQuown created a think tank to explore money management methods. The collaborative effort yielded the first index funds. McQuown forged other successful partnerships, including cofounding the quant hedge fund Diversified Credit Investments (DCI) in 2004. Leon Cooper shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics with two colleagues, with whom he worked on the theory of superconductivity. Superconductors remain a foundational element of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, whose scanning capabilities have helped save countless lives.
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A bookselling titan, a computer pioneer, and a pathbreaking neurosurgeon
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