Creatives at Work: To team or not to team?

Abstract

Abstract: Objectives: We aim to understand how and why creatives seeking income from their talents divide their time, effort and resources between working solo and working with others in creative activities. Prior Work: The research literature of entrepreneurship has analysed small and micro business behaviour in depth but largely left the specific and unusual characteristics of creative business under-researched. To some extent, this deficiency is being addressed by burgeoning cultural industry research which has laid analytical foundations for understanding the production processes of business-oriented creatives (Throsby, 2006:1) and patterns of employment mixing creative activity with traditional service work. On the other hand, there has been little analysis of why and to what extent individual creatives sometimes work alone and sometimes engage in creative activities with others. Approach: We use four cases to draw on the personal experiences of a writer, a musician and software and developer, a visual artist and a performing artist, in relation to their career development and the creative processes that involves their choice to work solo or with other creatives.

Results: We find that the motivation to work solo or with others seems to be determined by: the nature of the project (which influences process-related intrinsic rewards, requirements for complementary creative inputs and project uncertainty); concerns about the level and volatility of earnings in the solo setting, especially for early-career creatives; intrinsic rewards arising from peer-to-peer creative interactions and mentoring relationships in the collective setting; the experience of the artist in managing risk and creative relationships; and the availability (or otherwise) of potential collaborators. Implications: We contribute to the literature of the process of making art (Mace and Ward, 2002) as a business enterprise by providing insights into the factors behind the establishment, composition, and maintenance of creative project teams. We argue that creatives choose to engage in interactive, cumulative and dynamic production processes to contribute to wider creative community agendas and generate multiplier effects that have escaped the attention of researchers in the area. Value: This research contributes to understanding decision-making in project work and the determinants of the division of labour in small and micro-business networks. Our work sheds light on the net benefits for human and social capital perceived to flow from working alone and working collectively.