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Small world networks have received disproportionate notice in diverse fields because of their suspected effect on system dynamics. The authors analyzed the small world network of the creative artists who made Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989. Using original arguments, new statistical methods, and tests of construct validity, they found that the varying 'small world' properties of the systemic-level network of these artists affected their creativity in terms of the financial and artistic performance of the musicals they produced. The small world network effect was parabolic; performance increased up to a threshold, after which point the positive effects reversed. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press. © All rights reserved

Agents in creative enterprises are embedded in networks that inspire, support, and evaluate their work. Here, we investigate how the mechanisms by which creative teams self-assemble determine the structure of these collaboration networks. We propose a model for the self-assembly of creative teams that has its basis in three parameters: team size, the fraction of newcomers in new productions, and the tendency of incumbents to repeat previous collaborations. The model suggests that the emergence of a large connected community of practitioners can be described as a phase transition. We find that team assembly mechanisms determine both the structure of the collaboration network and team performance for teams derived from both artistic and scientific fields.

Small world networks have received disproportionate notice in diverse fields because of their suspected effect on system dynamics. The authors analyzed the small world network of the creative artists who made Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989. Using original arguments, new statistical methods, and tests of construct validity, they found that the varying “small world” properties of the systemic‐level network of these artists affected their creativity in terms of the financial and artistic performance of the musicals they produced. The small world network effect was parabolic; performance increased up to a threshold, after which point the positive effects reversed.

This paper focuses on how a dynamic network analysis can help account for the mobility of individuals within the network as a function of the collaborative strategies that they pursue. With a greater understanding of the mobility, it then becomes possible to understand which individuals are more likely to produce creations high in novelty, future impact and innovation. Two collaborative strategies are studied: incumbency seeking (working with another artist already in the network), and cohesion seeking (forming a repeat collaboration). Incumbency-seeking behavior increases interaction with the network, thus raising the likelihood of being susceptible to the mobility trends embedded within a specific network position. Therefore, when an individual has high levels of incumbency seeking and resides in a position in the network that has experienced high levels of upward mobility in the past, then that individual is expected to experience higher levels of upward mobility in the future. Cohesion seeking, on the other hand, decreases interaction with the network, which lowers the susceptibility to past mobility trends. The pursuit of cohesion-seeking behavior can be beneficial when individuals are in a network position that has experienced high levels of downward mobility in the past, because they would be less likely to move downward in the future. My second set of hypotheses relates to who in the network are the most likely originators of novelty, future impact and innovations. Individuals residing closer to the outer periphery are more likely to pursue novel behavior, because of the heightened risk associated with novelty. The work of individuals closer to the core, however, is more likely to have a larger future impact, because those individuals are the most likely to be emulated by others. Since innovation results when novelty is combined with future impact, static position alone cannot be used to determine where it originates. Instead, individuals residing in locations with higher levels of upward mobility become the likeliest group to produce innovation, because these positions have characteristics that promote both novelty and future impact. These hypotheses are confirmed empirically using the setting of the U.S. film industry. The analysis includes tens of thousands of artists covering a span of almost 100 years. For the analyses concerning novelty, future impact and innovation, the plot, character and settings characteristics of over 15,000 films are generated based on keywords associated with those films.

There is an acclaimed tradition in the history and sociology of science that emphasizes the role of the individual genius in scientific discovery (Merton, 1968; Bowler and Morus, 2005). This tradition focuses on the guiding contributions of solitary authors, such as Newton and Einstein, and can be seen broadly in the tendency to equate great ideas with particular names; for example: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Euclidean geometry, Nash equilibrium, and Kantian ethics. The role of individual contributions is also celebrated through science's award-granting institutions, like the Nobel Prize Foundation (English, 2005).However, several studies have explored the evident shift in science from this individual-based model of scientific advance to a collaborative model. By building on classic work by Harriet Zuckerman and Robert K. Merton, many authors have established a rising propensity for teamwork in samples of several research fields; with some studies going back a century (Collins, 1998; Cronin et al., 2003; Merton, 1973a; Jones, 2005). For example, Derek de Solla Price examined the change in team size in chemistry from 1910 to 1960, forecasting that by 1980 zero percent of the papers would be written by solo authors (de Solla Price, 1963). According to our research, the mean team size for papers written in chemistry had grown to nearly 3.7 contributors by the year 2000. Recently, Adams et al. (2005) established that teamwork has been increasing over time across broader sets of fields among the most competitive U.S. research universities.