Do Gurus Breed Gurus? An Analysis of Collaboration in Design

Abstract

Understanding the emergence of gurus is critical because they make novel and influential contributions to the field. This paper studies the role of collaboration on the emergence of gurus in the area of design. Specifically, we examine whether (and how) collaborating with design gurus influences significantly the chances of becoming a guru. We adjudicate underlying mechanisms of transformation from designer to guru through knowledge and social spillover effects. Supporting our arguments, collaborating with a guru does considerably augment the chances of entering an exceptional career, as compared to collaborating with non-gurus or no collaboration at all. We find that the advantages of collaborating with a guru are preserved when taking into account the strength of the collaboration with a guru, but such advantages vanish when including the guru’s social effect into our models. Our results highlight a social aspect of collaboration that has not received due attention in the literature: collaborating with ...