Your network can keep you creative

By now, it is an established fact that individuals are fully able to express their creativity when they shed their old cognitive patterns; this can happen when they spend time with people who have ways of thinking and behaving that are different from their own. An abundant research stream shows that interaction dynamics in networks accrue an assortment of content which, beyond providing a broader view of things and greater cognitive flexibility, allows individuals to identify connections that others can’t see, enhancing creative potential.  

To sum up, an open network generates creative advantages over time. But under what conditions? 

To answer this question, we need to consider the composition of the network and how it evolves. In other words, we need to know whether people maintain stable internal ties, or if they are always adding new ones. A stable network has clear advantages in terms of coordination and communication, fundamental aspects of efficiency, in particular when the task at hand is complex. Yet this stability can also make interactions overly rigid and routine, a far cry from the exploration of new cognitive models that could prompt people to reconsider their mode of organizing and processing knowledge. In other words, a more dynamic network, albeit less stable as far as coordination and communication, has undeniable advantages that foster creative freedom.  

According to our recent study,he negative aspects of stable network relationships outweigh the positive ones. In fact, network stability generates cognitive rigidity (homogenization of mental models and network structures) and social rigidity (entrenchment of interaction patterns). Both forms of rigidity compromise the creative advantages that come from heterogeneity of the contents that people share in networks, to the point of actually cancelling out said advantages altogether.

Our study is based on two preliminary hypotheses. The first holds that creativity is weaker in networks with stable structures, and stronger when the opposite is true. This happens because newcomers do not share the mental models and the same opinions as the network they are joining, so they question what others no longer see or take for granted. People who have a stable network, instead, tend to be more rigid and follow more routine patterns, both in terms of who they talk to and how they interact. Our second hypothesis posits that there is a positive relationship between creativity and the degree of network openness (and the resulting content heterogeneity, which is invariably higher with an open structure), but this relationship is attenuated by network stability.    

To test these two hypotheses empirically, we needed a research environment where a group of individuals were continually engaged in creative activities. We found such an environment in the team of creative professionals behind “Doctor Who,” the longest-running science fiction TV show in the world. Since its 1963 debut, today Doctor who is broadcast in more than 50 countries and is one of the highest earning programs for the BBC. The series tells of the adventures of an alien who explores the universe by travelling through space and time, in the company of various characters who help fight enemies on different planets with different civilization and in different times. Whenever Doctor Who is mortally wounded, this being regenerates and takes on a new physical form. 

The sample analyzed in our study consists of the entire population of the members of various teams who worked on the 273 episodes produced from 1963 to 2014. The main artists for each episode include three creative roles: the producer, one or more directors, and one or more writers. The network of each artist in turn is made up of other people he or she works with on the series (sound technicians, graphic designers, stage technicians, etc.). To assess creativity, we recruited two external judges, experts in the field, and we applied a number of parameters: mental openness (maximum when the artist works with collaborators who often work together), network stability (calculated as the number of new people the artist worked with on a specific episode), content heterogeneity (which is low if the artist worked on episodes and stories with the same setting and the same lead actor). The findings of our research highlight a number of salient points:  

1. Past creativity has a negative effect on present creativity. 

1. Neither network openness nor network stability has any particular influence on creativity, while the impact of content heterogeneity is significant.  

1. The effect of both network openness and heterogeneous content become weaker as the stability of network ties grows. Instead, the apex of creativity is reached when people from different backgrounds work with many new teammates. 

Maintaining the same group composition over time can make contents grow stale more quickly, generating rigidity in mental structures and also hindering the simple ability to recognize and process new contents. Instead, adding new people to networks is a way to ensure that all information is given equal consideration, eliminating bias toward new viewpoints and contents. 

• In the business world, the demand for creative ideas is growing at a constant rate. So for companies, figuring out how to conserve creativity among employees over time is an increasingly strategic issue.  

• Constantly rejuvenating the composition of professional groups ensures that individual creativity is continually being nourished. But this only happens if the network structures and contents accrued over time are capable of triggering a shock that can activate generative reconfiguration processes.  
• This study opens a new perspective on the relationship between professional groups and creativity, with noteworthy implications. First and foremost, we demonstrate that to support creativity in the long run, individuals must systematically expand their professional networks by adding new people. When managers are not very open to new team members or offer them little collaboration, they cannot guarantee the generation of new creative ideas for their company.  Indeed, they run the risk of jeopardizing its very survival.