Hot streaks are well known in a sporting context, although they’ve debunked in terms of being able to predict future performance.  They describe an apparent run of success whereby the individual or team is onto something special.  A recent study from Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology explores whether similar hot streams can be observed in the careers of creative professionals.

The team analyzed the output of 30,000 scientists, artists, film directors and other creative professionals to see if they could observe any noticeable patterns.

“Around 90 percent of professionals in those industries have at least one hot hand, and some of them have two or even three,” the authors say.

On a roll

Traditionally, there have been two main schools of thought regarding career success.  The first is that success begets success, and that the better you become, the more successful you become.  The second suggests that career success is largely random, and that productivity levels are key.  The Penn State team propose a third point of view, that suggests people have periods where they thrive more than normal, but that this timing is largely random.

“Different from the perception [in innovation literature] that peak performance occurs in an individual’s 30s or 40s, Our results suggest that individuals have equal chance to perform better even in their late careers,” the authors explain.

Interestingly however, whilst people appeared to have hot streaks, which seemed to last around 4-5 years on average, they were not actually more productive during that period.

“Individuals show no detectable change in productivity during hot streaks, despite the fact that their outputs in this period are significantly better than the median, suggesting that there is an endogenous shift in individual creativity when the hot streak occurs,” they write.

Measuring impact

The team measured the impact of professionals via a number of metrics, including the citation record of scientists, auction prices for artists, and IMDB ratings for movie directors.

The highest quality output appeared to largely be randomly timed, but when the relative timing of these highest-impact works was assessed, there appeared to be a correlation.  What’s more, this appeared across creative domains, with high profile artists ranging from film director Peter Jackson to artist Vincent Van Gogh.

The researchers believe that better understanding these hot streaks can help us to better understand the innovation process.  They even believe that we could potentially do more to discover people in the midst of a hot streak, and help them make the most of them.

“We know that these domains have different natures,” they conclude. “For example, scientists collaborate with each other and artists work alone. If we can find the triggers and drivers behind the universal pattern, that would be much more interesting.”