Brokering the core and the periphery: Creative success and collaboration networks in the film industry

PLoS One. 2020 Feb 27;15(2):e0229436. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229436. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

In collaboration-based creative industries, such as film production, creators in the network core enjoy prestige and legitimacy that are key for creative success. However, core creators are challenged to maintain diverse access to new ideas or alternative views that often emerge from the network periphery. In this paper, we demonstrate that creators in the network core can increase the probability of their creative success by brokering peripheral collaborators to the core. The argument is tested on a dynamic collaboration network of movie creators constructed from a unique dataset of Hungarian feature films for the 1990-2009 period. We propose a new way to capture brokers' role in core/periphery networks and provide evidence that being in the core and at the same time bridging between the core and the periphery of the network significantly increases the likelihood of award winning.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Achievement*
  • Cooperative Behavior*
  • Humans
  • Industry / standards*
  • Information Dissemination / methods*
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Motion Pictures / standards*
  • Social Behavior
  • Social Networking*

Associated data

  • Dryad/10.5061/dryad.r852n88

Grants and funding

Sándor Juhász received financial support from the New National Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities, Hungary (ÚNKP-18-3). Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA K-129207) Balázs Lengyel Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), SFI Science Policy Research Programme (grant agreement No 17/SPR/5324, SciTechSpace) Gergő Tóth The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.