A Core/Periphery Perspective on Individual Creative Performance: Social Networks and Cinematic Achievements in the Hollywood Film Industry

By Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani. Organ. Sci., 2008

648 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The paper advances a relational perspective to studying creativity at the individual level. Building on social network theory and techniques, we examine the role of social networks in shaping individuals’ ability to generate a creative outcome. More specifically, we argue that individuals who occupy an intermediate position between the core and the periphery of their social system are in a favorable position to achieve creative results. In addition, the benefits accrued through an individual’s intermediate core/periphery position can also be observed at the team level, when the same individual works in a team whose members come from both ends of the core/periphery continuum. We situate the analysis and test our hypotheses within the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry, which we trace over the period 1992–2003. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee9bc4944b7a015e0197241069770913b88eaf64

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

The Core and Cosmopolitans: A Relational View of Innovation in User Communities (2012, methodology): “Peripherally positioned people can escape the “homogenizing effects typical of an established institutional framework” (Cattani and Ferriani 2008, p. 827) and thus focus on developing their innovation even if they do not conform to accepted standards and practices of the community.”
The influence of relationship networks on academic performance in higher education: a comparative study between students of a creative and a non-creative discipline (2016, background): “4 of the network having a poor visibility and social engagement with those in the core (Cattani and Ferriani 2008).”
Lock-in or lock-out ? How structural properties of knowledge networks affect regional resilience (2014, background): “In the case of clusters, these bridging strategies have implications on the overall structure since they can be a better circulation of knowledge between the core and the periphery of a network (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008).”
Exploring the Locus of Invention: The Dynamics of Network Communities and Firms' Invention Productivity (2014, methodology): “This model captures to what extent a firm is positioned closer to the core than the periphery of its network community and is more precise than the discrete model of core/periphery (for a similar approach, see Cattani & Ferriani, 2008).”
Creative Leadership: A Multi-Context Conceptualization† (2015, background): “Overall, the extant literature suggests that in order to lead creatively, directors need substantial social, symbolic, and technical capital (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Delmestri et al., 2005; Ferriani et al., 2005); cognitive and behavioral flexibility (Dunham & Freeman, 2000); and social and…”
Clusters for life or life cycles of clusters: in search of the critical factors of clusters' resilience (2014, background): “Introducing such in-betweenner agents brings a minimal amount of heterophilic structural behaviours and thus can favour the evolution of networks in turbulent economic environments (Grabher and Stark 1997; Cattani and Ferriani 2008).”
Guiding the use of Grounded Theory in Doctoral studies – an example from the Australian film industry (2011, background): “Film production teams draw together individuals with different types of expertise, and thus knowledge specific to individuals, 7 which is not held by others, is common (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008).”
Cultural Industries: Product–Market Characteristics, Management Challenges and Industry Dynamics (2015, positive): “From the viewpoint of individual artists, an intermediate position between core and periphery is beneficial for creative outcomes (Cattani and Ferriani 2008).”
Towards an Evolutionary Perspective on Regional Resilience (2015, background): “Besides looking at network structures as a whole, studies have investigated the strategic role of key agents in networks to ensure coordination and induce real change at the same time (CATTANI and FERRIANI, 2008).”
Creativity at the Knowledge Frontier: The Impact of Specialization in Fast- and Slow-paced Domains* (2018, background): “Scholars have shown that breakthrough inventions often involve uncommon recombinations of knowledge components from distant domains (Ahuja and Lampert, 2001; Fleming, 2001), and others have found a link between access to atypical knowledge sources and the creative performance of artists (Cattani and”
A visual analytics approach to understanding cycling behaviour (2012, neutral): “As Lombard and Ditton explain in their frequently cited essay, presence is ‘the artificial sense that a user has in a virtual environment that the environment is unmediated’ (1997).”