[Noughmad]

It isn't so much about competitiveness or pettiness, but rather about individualism. Americans for some reason always like to think that everything was invented by a single super-genious individual working alone in a cave with a box of scraps. That's how it's always presented in the media - superheroes (alone or in a very small group), lone scientists, billionaires who single-handedly created their wealth from scratch, etc.

[ploum]

That’s one huge part of Ayn Rand’s legacy.

In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden locks himself for year in a small laboratory, comes up alone with a new formula for super strong steel and, because it is the best steel, Rearden becomes a very successful entrepreneur.

This makes absolutely no sense but for some reasons I don’t explain, this is now seen as how science and business should work in the eyes of people calling themselves "realists".

[mathgeek]

It goes back a lot further than that. “One man who did it all himself” is at least as old as Hercules, Atlas, Noah, etc.

[nvm0n1]

Why does that make no sense? Sounds a lot like how Google and Facebook were both born along with many other businesses. Rearden is never said to run the whole business himself after all, just do the experiments to develop the new tech.