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BROKERING CREATIVITY:
In order to stimulate a productive creative process, it will not be enough simply to empower or transform the individual; individual creativity will only thrive when individuals are part of a larger creative “system”, through which different ideas and aptitudes can collide in unpredictable ways. Engineering such a system is the role of the creativity broker, enabling connections across boundaries and encouraging people to exchange ideas and talents and to collaborate in their mutual development.
Similarly, if we accept that creativity is a process, it will not be enough for managers of creative businesses simply to identify and nurture talented individuals. While talent may yield the potential for creativity, if raw talent is to be productive, it must be connected to other ideas and other people. Creativity brokers do not necessarily possess the talents themselves, but they know how to broker other people’s abilities into productive relationships; they also have an eye for the market. In the music industry Simon Frith (1983, pp. 99–102) has identi?ed the importance of “hucksters”, the small-time players who broker deals between artists, labels, radio stations and listeners. As functions of A & R, artist management, marketing and promotion become increasingly centralised, the old brokering skills of Frith’s hucksters have become increasingly marginal. The result is a more streamlined management style with less space for the unexpected hit and the unpredictable talent.
For the individual artist, the ability to broker creativity may be a more important factor than individual talent. As already noted, attempts by psychologists to measure or predict creativity by identifying specific “traits” or abilities have never resulted in a consistent pattern or personality. The most productive creative mind will not necessarily be the most naturally talented. Equally, it is not uncommon to possess all the natural talents to be creative, yet lack the vital spark to turn that creativity into productive output (Storr, 1972, p. 49). The missing ingredient here may be the ability to tap into whatever natural talents are there—and to borrow other people’s.
As noted by Weisberg and Amabile, this “tapping in” requires motivation, self-awareness and knowledge of the domain. Artists who are genuinely productive (rather than simply showing “potential”) may not possess the greatest talents but they know their own strengths and weaknesses, provoking the necessary trade-offs in order to achieve an effective combination.
They are good at tuning into and exploiting their own stocks of experiences, memories and different styles of thinking. They are also alert enough to broker deals with other creative talents when their own creative equity is low.
This capacity to broker “deals” is especially important in the commercial creative industries. Turning an idea into a commodity requires a range of different types of thinking and specialist expertise from different individuals, from talent scouts to producers and editors. On rare occasions, individual creators may have the flexibility to play all or some of these roles themselves. More often they will need to broker their own talents and other people’s, building effective alliances and finding the right person (or the right technology) for the right task. The ability to “broker” connections between different people, experiences, talents, technologies and emotions becomes the principal function of both creators and managers in the creative industries.