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2,092 people who worked on
474 musicals from 1945 to 1989
Small world networks & creativity
AJS Volume 111 Number 2 (September 2005): 000–000 PROOF 1
᭧ 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/2005/11102-0003$10.00
Thursday Oct 13 2005 11:31 AM AJS v111n2 090090 VSJ
Collaboration and Creativity: The Small
World Problem1
Brian Uzzi
Northwestern University
Jarrett Spiro
Stanford University
Small world networks have received disproportionate notice in di-
verse 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. Based on 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 in-
creased up to a threshold after which point the positive effects
reversed.
Creativity aids problem solving, innovation, and aesthetics, yet our un-
derstanding of it is still forming. We know that creativity is spurred when
diverse ideas are united or when creative material in one domain inspires
or forces fresh thinking in another. These structural preconditions suggest
1 Our thanks go out to Duncan Watts; Huggy Rao; Peter Murmann; Ron Burt; Matt
Bothner; Frank Dobbin; Bruce Kogut; Lee Fleming; David Stark; John Padgett; Dan
Diermeier; Stuart Oken; Jerry Davis; Woody Powell; workshop participants at the
University of Chicago, University of California at Los Angeles, Harvard, Cornell, New
York University, the Northwestern University Institute for Complex Organizations
(NICO); and the excellent AJS reviewers, especially the reviewer who provided a
remarkable 15, single-spaced pages of superb commentary. We particularly wish to
thank Mark Newman for his advice and help in developing and interpreting the
bipartite-affiliation network statistics. We also wish to give very special thanks to the
Santa Fe Institute for creating a rich collaborative environment wherein these ideas
first emerged, and to John Padgett, the organizer of the States and Markets group at
the Santa Fe Institute. Direct correspondence to Brian Uzzi, Kellog School of Man-
agement, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208. E-mail:
Uzzi@northwestern.edu