Creativity and the Ideal Mix of Collaborators

“When the right mixture of people come together and they collaborate in the right way, what happens can often feel like magic.”

Is there a science to putting together the right mixture of people? Could it be that assembling a successful, creative ensemble can be distilled into a measurable quotient? Many of the creative challenges an individual or group faces require the perspective of people from different backgrounds who can bridge the gap between disciplines. In an ensemble, this may mean bringing together people with different types of strengths or experiences.

The Broadway Study: Measuring Creative Chemistry

Brian Uzzi, a sociologist from Northwestern University, spent much of his career analyzing the success of Broadway musicals over more than a century. Broadway is a particularly rich subject for this kind of research because a musical cannot possibly be built on just one person — it brings together composers, lyricists, choreographers, directors, and many other types of talent working in close collaboration.

Heifetz, Primrose, Piatigorsky and Pennario — a legendary example of creative collaboration in the string world.

After studying 2,258 creative teams between 1877 and 1990, Uzzi discovered that the people who worked on Broadway were part of an extremely interconnected social network. He developed a way to measure the density of these connections, which he called Q — a metric reflecting the degree of social intimacy among collaborators.

A Broadway musical built with a team that had worked together many times before would have a high Q. A show assembled from strangers would have a very low Q. This metric allowed Uzzi to study the correlation between Q level and the success of each production.

The Sweet Spot: Not Too Close, Not Too Distant

Uzzi found that when Q was low, shows were typically unsuccessful — collaborators were too unfamiliar with each other to exchange ideas effectively. But when Q was too high, the work also suffered. Artists who were too close tended to think alike, which inhibited theatrical creativity. As Uzzi observed: “All the great talent ended up producing mediocre musicals.”

The ideal Q turned out to be an intermediate level of social intimacy. Groups with this balance were 2½ times more likely to be successful. These teams included old friends alongside new collaborators — a “sweet spot” where artists could interact effectively because of existing familiarity, while still incorporating fresh ideas and perspectives. In other words, they were comfortable with each other, but not too comfortable.

For string players and ensemble musicians, this research offers a compelling framework: the most creatively fertile collaborations are neither entirely familiar nor entirely new. The magic happens somewhere in between.

by Rozanna Weinberger, February 20, 2014