How much new blood does a team need to stay productively creative?

Have you ever wondered what it takes to keep teams coming up with breakthrough creative ideas, year after year? One of the secrets is in how often there is an influx of new talent into the team.

While it’s tempting to keep successful teams working together on project after project, after a while these teams begin to lose their edge. Over time, teams will begin to form habits based on their past successes. While this is extremely useful for teams that need to consistently produce high-quality craft, it is much less helpful for teams who need to come up with original ideas. In fact, over time success can breed complacency, and in extreme cases can make team members more risk-averse to trying ideas which are different to what has worked for them in the past.

So it is important that every now and again, the makeup of a team changes when starting new innovation challenges. But just how much new blood is ideal? Brian Uzzi, Professor at Northwestern, wanted to see if there was a way to find out how similarities between creative teams and success could be measured. He found his desired dataset by looking at playbills from over 478 Broadway musical productions with over 2,000 team members, where long-term critical success requires a high degree of creativity.

Researchers have found a 50:50 ratio is about ideal

By coding which people were in each production over time, his team could spot how teams of people moved between productions over time. He could then give a rating of similarity for each production, based on the proportion of people who had worked together previously. This ratio was called Q. Finally, he assessed which shows could be counted as successful, based not only on critical reviews but on whether the shows were able to break even or even go on extended runs.

Using a 1 (all team members new to each other) to 5 (all production cast have moved project together) measurement scale, he found that a Q below 1.6 was unlikely to be successful as team members had not yet developed a chemistry or could complement each other’s strengths. However, a Q above 3.4 was also likely to predict an inferior production. The ideal Q rating was about 2.6, which is about a 50%:50% ratio between existing team members and new blood.

Uzzi’s work also included a number of other data sets showing how there is a gradual move over the past few decades for the most impactful creative work, including in the sciences and mathematics, to be done by teams rather than individuals.

Not only that, but these teams no longer need to be located together anymore. Many of the highest impact teams now span the world, collaborating remotely, often working with each for the first time.

So if you want to keep your innovation projects successful, it is important that you put in place a system whereby people are moved between projects.

This keeps teams fresh and ideas flowing.

Bio
Latest Posts

Nick Skillicorn

Chief Editor, Founder & CEO at Improvides Innovation Consulting

Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.