Abstract

This article argues for the importance of forbidden triads – open triads with high-weight edges – in predicting success in creative fields. Forbidden triads had been treated as a residual category beyond closed and open triads, yet I argue that these structures provide opportunities to combine socially evolved styles in new ways. Using data on the entire history of recorded jazz from 1896 to 2010, I show that observed collaborations have tolerated the openness of high weight triads more than expected, observed jazz sessions had more forbidden triads than expected, and the density of forbidden triads contributed to the success of recording sessions, measured by the number of record releases of session material. The article also shows that the sessions of Miles Davis had received an especially high boost from forbidden triads.

Highlights

  • While the spread and adoption of innovations has been a central concern of social network research (Centola 2015), we know much less about the network structures that contribute to the generation of innovation

  • Forbidden triads are defined as triads with a minimal triplet leg weight of two (w(2) ≥ 2), but the results presented are robust to varying this threshold. (See Appendix B for details on model robustness to varying w(2).) I am using the open triads category as the reference in the multivariate models, and enter squared terms for both closed and forbidden triads densities to capture non-linear relationships

  • The history of the jazz field is about constant experimentation – a quest for new sounds

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Summary

Introduction

While the spread and adoption of innovations has been a central concern of social network research (Centola 2015), we know much less about the network structures that contribute to the generation of innovation. Using the combination of minimal triplet leg weight and the presence of closure allows us to distinguish three triad types: Open triads are those where the minimal triplet leg weight is equal to one, and there is no closure This triad is the building block of weak ties that connect communities (Granovetter 1973), or that contribute to lowering path length in small world networks (Watts 1999), and present brokerage opportunities (Burt 1992). Triplets with minimal legs weight has a probability of closure of .120, that increases suddenly around the threshold of forbidden triads of. The total amount of experience of musicians (measured in the total number of past sessions musicians played on) can contribute to both success and forbidden triads. Table 4 shows Pearson correlation coefficients for all pairs of variables

Distinctiveness
NB model of Releases
Conclusions
Findings
NB model of Releases with fixed effects
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