Success and luck in creative careers

Milán Janosov, Federico Battiston, Roberta Sinatra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Luck is considered a crucial ingredient to achieve impact in all creative domains, despite their diversity. For instance, in science, the movie industry, music, and art, the occurrence of the highest impact work and a hot streak within a creative career are very difficult to predict. Are there domains that are more prone to luck than others? Here, we provide new insights on the role of randomness in impact in creative careers in two ways: (i) we systematically untangle luck and individual ability to generate impact in the movie, music, and book industries, and in science, and compare the luck factor between these fields; (ii) we show the surprising presence of randomness in the relationship between collaboration networks and timing of career hits. Taken together, our analysis suggests that luck consistently affects career impact across all considered sectors and improves our understanding in pinpointing the key elements in driving success.

Original languageEnglish
Article number9
JournalEPJ Data Science
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2020

Keywords

  • Creative careers
  • Dynamics of impact
  • Science of science
  • Success

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