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

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

Communicative and linguistic development in preterm children: a longitudinal study from 12 to 24 months.

BACKGROUND: Research conducted on preterm children's linguistic skills has provided varying pictures, and the question of whether and to what extent preterm children are delayed in early language acquisition remains largely unresolved. AIMS: To examine communicative and linguistic development during the second year in a group of Italian children born prematurely using the 'Primo Vocabolario del Bambino' (PVB), the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. The primary goal was to compare action/gesture production, word comprehension, and word production, and the relationship between these three domains in preterm children and to normative data obtained from a large sample of Italian children born at term. A second aim was to address the longstanding debate regarding the use of chronological versus corrected gestational age in the assessment of preterm children's abilities. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Parents of twelve preterm children completed the PVB questionnaire at five age points during the children's second year, and scores were compared with those from a normative sample of full-term children and those of 59 full-term children selected as a control group from the normative sample for the PVB. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Preterm children exhibited a delay in all three aspects of communication and language. In particular, communicative-linguistic age tended to lag approximately 3 months behind chronological age when children were between the ages of 12 and 24 months. When chronological age was used, preterm children's percentile scores for all three components of communication and language fell within the lower limits of the normal range, while scores calculated using corrected age either fell at or above the 50th percentile. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Findings suggest that despite the significant biological risk engendered by premature birth, early communicative and linguistic development appears to proceed in a relatively robust fashion among preterm children, with tight relations across communicative domains as in full-term children. Employing both chronological and corrected gestational age criteria in the evaluation of preterm children's abilities may provide important information about their progress in language acquisition. This may be especially important during the initial stages of communicative and linguistic development, inasmuch as comparisons of the two sets of scores may provide clinicians with a way to distinguish children who may be at risk for language problems from those who may be expected to progress normally

Friends, Cliques and Gifts: Social Proximity and Recognition in Peer-Based Tournament Rituals

Two main accounts of the effect of proximity between candidates competing for recognition and members of the evaluating audience in the underlying social structure can be extrapolated from extant literature on peer-based tournament rituals and cultural fields. Following a Bourdieusian tradition, one account – which we label self-reproduction – insists on the catalyzing effect of social proximity in shaping recognition along relational lines. Drawing from recent scholarship on social evaluation, a second account – which we label intellectual distance – suggests that social proximity deters recognition. We probe the influence of different articulations of social proximity (i.e., direct ties, cliquishness and reciprocity) on recognition by studying awarding decisions within the context of the Norwegian advertising industry. Interviews with key informants and econometric results suggest that, while self-reproduction tends to prevail over intellectual distance, these effects co-exist and their relative influence varies across levels of recognition. We gauge the relative saliency of the two accounts by using a mix-method approach. Important implications for research on social evaluation and recognition in peer-based tournament rituals are drawn

The Social Structure of Consecration in Cultural Fields: The Influence of Status and Social Distance in Audience–Candidate Evaluative Processes

Building on sociological research that examines the allocation of rewards in peer evaluations, we argue that the recognition of cultural producers’ work varies with their status and social distance from the audience members who evaluate them. We study the influence of these two mechanisms within the context of the Norwegian advertising industry. Specifically, we looked at how cultural producers’ status and social distance from jury members affect their chances of being honored in “The Silver Tag” – one of the main digital advertising award contests in Norway – during the period 2003–2010. While our findings provide support for status-based rewards allocation, the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought. When accounting for the existence of previous connections between audience members and cultural producers, we find that cultural producers are more or less likely to receive an accolade depending on their degree of separation from the audience members. By exposing network-based determinants of consecrating decisions, and suggesting that the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought, our findings shed important light on the social foundations of evaluation and, more broadly, the mechanisms of reward allocation in cultural fields

Creativity in Social Networks: A Core-Periphery Perspectiv

Building on socio-structural explanations, this article elaborates on the tension between individual actors’ positions along the core-periphery continuum of the social field and their ability to gain legitimacy for their creative work. Peripheral actors are less constrained by the field’s normative pressures and free to experiment with un- conventional ideas and solutions, but they may struggle to mobilize attention and harness the symbolic and material resources needed to legitimate their work. By contrast, core players are more effective at leveraging networks to build consensus, but they often exhibit a propensity toward more incremental work due to their higher levels of assimilation into the conventions of the field. To resolve this tension this article advances a strategy which we term optimal network structuration strategy . This strategy implies forming ties that link the two ends of the core-periphery spectrum, in the attempt to increase the likelihood of generating novelty while also enhancing the ability to make such novelty manifest and visible to the field. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

Passive techniques for the enhancement of convective heat transfer in single phase duct flow

This review presents the main results of the experimental campaign on passive techniques for the enhancement of forced convective single phase heat transfer in ducts, performed in the last years at the Laboratory of the Industrial Engineering Department of the University of Parma by the Applied Physics research group. The research was mainly focused on two passive techniques, widely adopted for the thermal processing of medium and high viscosity fluids, based on wall corrugation and on wall curvature . The innovative compound heat transfer enhancement technique that couples together the effect of wall curvature and of wall corrugation has been investigated as well. The research has been mainly focused on understanding the causal relationship between the heat transfer surface modification and the convection enhancement phenomenon, by accounting the effect of the fluid Prandtl number. The pressure loss penalties were also evaluated. The principal results are presented and discussed

Tell Me Your Story and I Will Tell Your Sales: A Topic Model Analysis of Narrative Style and Firm Performance on Etsy

Strategy scholars have widely recognized the central role that narratives play in the construction of organizational identities. Moreover, storytelling is an important strategic asset that firms can leverage to inspire employees, excite investors and engage customers' attention. This chapter illustrates how advancements in computational linguistic may offer opportunities to analyze the stylistic elements that make a story more convincing. Specifically, we use a topic model to examine how narrative conventionality influences the performance of 78,758 craftsmen selling their handmade items in the digital marketplace of Etsy. Our findings provide empirical evidence that effective narratives display enough conventional features to align with audience expectations, yet preserve some uniqueness to pique audience interest. By elucidating our approach, we hope to stimulate further research at the interface of style, language and strategy