Joanna Bakas was recently invited to join a panel at Ubercloud on the subject of which was collaboration, co-creation and crowd sourcing. Find out more about the deck on our blog: http://www.lhbs.at/thoughts/2011/09/28/what-creative-agencies-can-learn-from-broadway-musicals/

1. what creative agencies can learn from Broadway musicals
about collaboration and producing box office hits
@jo_vanna
@lhbs_at
collaboration and co-creation are big buzz words these day but most organization either don’t do it or don’t do it well
in order to optimize the best outcome.
here are a few interesting insight from another creative industry: BROADWAY

2. crowd-sourcing, co-creation and
collaboration
revealing the energy of creative ideas
there is not much that one can argue with - these are good words and good practices - for the purpose of this small document, let me say that what I
mean by Creative Ideas are those holistic concepts that can transfer brands and not simply one off creative executions
by collaboration I also mean people and team coming together to jointly run brains together to solve issues not simply having ALL disciplines under one
roof, each adding their bit to the puzzle
for me collaboration is not ad additive creative process but a full merging of skills, knowledge and building off of one another

3. the pace of change requires new
thinking and new talent at a fast pace
the digital evolution has changed the collaboration, co-creation and
business & creative landscape and arguably crowd-sourcing are powerful
simply facilitated the ability to tools to energize people and ideas
connect, exchange and grow ideas. BUT in what framework?
a key reason for collaboration and co-creation is the fast pace of change creative agencies are challenged with because new technologies enable
constantly new ways for brands to tell and love their stories - because new technologies emerge daily a shop can either try to keep up with new skills
and talent acquisition ( a daily event ) or promise one stop shop shopping and frankly not be able to deliver on the promise
but do some frameworks work better than others? are some team setups more productive in producing consistently great output?

4. Kellogg Study: Brian Uzzi & Jarrett Spiro
Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem
http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/Kellogg/article/collaboration_and_creativity
some insight comes from academia - several years ago, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University conducted a study of creative ‘social networks’ by looking at the creative teams that come
together to create Broadway musicals - they examined a huge body of work spanning decades of work
involving thousands of individuals.

5. organization of creative social networks
how they govern success
‘collaborative’ conditions for a ‘hit’
success: critical acclaim & industry recognition, commercial success
the Kellogg team looked at the teams that come together to put together a full musical as ‘social networks’ much like a
Facebook or Twitter these people have some level of previous experience together, are connected with the broader
industry by some degree of separation, either with many degrees or fewer
the research looked at this level of connectedness and measured success rates of variously connected teams
much like creative agency criteria for success, the study defined succes as having two components:
critical acclaim and industry recognition coupled with financial succss

6. creative talent networked in ‘small worlds’ and bigger worlds
creative talent networked in ‘small worlds’ and bigger worlds
connected and cohesive working towards the big HIT
another similarity between the two industries is the fact that many types of talents come together to produce a hit or a
flop - on Broadway, it’s a director, producer, story teller, composer, lyricist, choreographer, etc...

7. gelling individual creative inputs into one big ‘production’
and much like agency talents, they get together to bring their creative capabilities, fine tune stories, get inspiration
from one another to make the outcome better, more creative and more relevant and finally ‘launch’ what is hopefully
the polished job

8. new blood and
industry veterans
‘success is derived from ‘individual capabilities are
relationships with other amplified or limited
people, through whom we through the network’
get access to capabilities
and expertise beyond
ourselves’
the main finding of the study is that for success, it’s not just what you know, your individual talent and creativity but
also who you know, the level of connectedness of any one team - basically, the level of ‘like mindedness’ contributes
to the hit rate as well as to the high or low level of creative contribution of each individual - the RIGHT BALANCE of
insiders and new blood seems to the righ balance or the ‘BLISS POINT”

9. hitting the sweet spot of
collaborative success
finding the ‘BLISS’ point

10. Fig. 6.—Financial success of a season
% financial success
% critical acclaim
connection and cohesion
Fig. 7.—Artistic success of a season
the percentage of productions that might be considered SUCCESS produced by teams with low levels of
connectedness and cohesion is low and rises to an optimal point of connection then reduces drastically when the
teams become too tight, have been exposed to the same people and ideas in the past - in short the teams that were
made of mainly industry insiders also failed with work that was too conventional, expected and ‘safe’ and seen before

11. hyper-cohesion & connection
too many insiders
insulated and protected
The blue octagons represent respective teams for various productions. The pink line represents how
connected they are to one another, the industry and peers they share within their networks.
In the world of online social network this represents how much teams ‘share the same news feeds’ and
therefore creative impulses and stimulus.
This is an examples of teams that are brought together with too much like mindedness and connection.
Because they’re ‘swimming’ in the same pond, they rarely bring any new perspective to the table and they
produce generally weak and conventional work even though the teams themselves are highly committed to
producing ground breaking outcomes. Their world is too small and this is referred to as the SMALL WORLD limits talent
PROBLEM.
no new knowledge
output: convention even though the teams are deeply committed to non conventional thinking and ideas

12. This diagram represents a teams who are not linked enough through their networks. Teams that are too loose
and lack enough cohesion generally have either big hits or massive flops and their success is not
sustainable. There is not enough similar frame of reference to tie together the team.
They lack shared knowledge and lack insiders.
too loose
This is slightly contrary to what might consider when putting together teams of totally un-like minded people,
generally expecting that they deliver totally new and innovative ideas. They may but these ideas may not
always be relevant and therefore fail.
not enough common frames of reference
not enough cohesion to maximize idea exchange

13. right balance of industry insiders and new blood
acceptance of ‘risk’
the bliss point
This is an illustration of the ideal level of connectedness and like
mindedeness. It represents the right balance between conventional and
innovative thinking and the right balance between insiders and new blood.
New and powerful ideas will not generally come from people will not come
from teams that share the same knowledge, experience and ways of looking at
the world.
Nor will they be continually generated by new ‘outsiders’ with great talent and
creative minds.
You need a bot of the old school and new school and this is a big lesson for
creative agences.
Mix, use and mash up the classic and the new for more and better outcomes.
right balance of convention: understandability & innovation: freshness

14. old and new for commercial success

15. that your peers will applaud
old and new for critical acclaim & higher industry standards

16. old and new for an environment that amplifies individual talent

17. thank you
Joanna Bakas
Managing Partner LHBS
@jo_vanna
LHBS Consulting GmbH http://www.lhbs.at
Rasumofskygasse 26 / Neubaugasse 1 http://www.twitter.com/LHBS_at
1030 Wien / 1070 Wien http://www.facebook.com/LHBS.at