'Positive deviants': Why rebellious workers spark great ideas

Undeterred, the renegade group – who subsequently called themselves ‘the pirates’ – began to code new software for the mission control sub-systems in their free time, using borrowed equipment from Nasa suppliers. The rebel engineers were then asked to design the mission control system for the forthcoming International Space Station. He found they consciously saw things with a fresh mindset rather than blindly following established wisdom – two qualities that would seem to suggest a rebellious, rather than conformist, personality.The Nasa pirates' system led to the successful introduction of new technologies at Mission Control - even though flight controllers initially rejected the ideasTo investigate the benefits of rebelliousness further, a team led by Paraskevas Petrou at the Erasmus University Rotterdam recently surveyed 156 employees from various industries in the Netherlands. Often these ‘rebels with a cause’ – also known as positive or constructive “deviants” – may be motivated because they care for the organisation and its mission, and feel psychological discomfort when they see that important capabilities clearly need improvement. And this more open-minded approach to change owes a lot to the work of its internal renegades, who provided proof of concept of employing commercially available technology decades ago and challenged traditional ways of doing things.