Center for Science of Science and Innovation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Sep 13;12(1):5392. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25477-8.
Across a range of creative domains, individual careers are characterized by hot streaks, which are bursts of high-impact works clustered together in close succession. Yet it remains unclear if there are any regularities underlying the beginning of hot streaks. Here, we analyze career histories of artists, film directors, and scientists, and develop deep learning and network science methods to build high-dimensional representations of their creative outputs. We find that across all three domains, individuals tend to explore diverse styles or topics before their hot streak, but become notably more focused after the hot streak begins. Crucially, hot streaks appear to be associated with neither exploration nor exploitation behavior in isolation, but a particular sequence of exploration followed by exploitation, where the transition from exploration to exploitation closely traces the onset of a hot streak. Overall, these results may have implications for identifying and nurturing talents across a wide range of creative domains.
在一系列创意领域中，个体的职业生涯以热点时期为特征，即一系列高影响力作品集中在一起的爆发。然而，目前尚不清楚热点时期的开始是否存在任何规律。在这里，我们分析了艺术家、电影导演和科学家的职业历史，并开发了深度学习和网络科学方法，以构建他们创作成果的高维表示。我们发现，在所有三个领域中，个人在热点时期之前往往会探索不同的风格或主题，但在热点时期开始后，他们的注意力会明显更加集中。至关重要的是，热点时期似乎既与探索行为也与开发行为无关，而是一种特定的探索与开发的顺序，从探索到开发的转变紧密追踪热点时期的开始。总的来说，这些结果可能对识别和培养各个创意领域的人才具有重要意义。
