Social Networks, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship

The lone genius view is no longer the sole paradigm used to understand creativity, consistent with the highly collaborative environments in which many entrepreneurs and workers operate. To this end, we review the body of research that views creativity through a social network lens to fully understand the social aspects of creativity. We start by describing why understanding creativity from a social network perspective is important for all organizations and is particularly relevant to the study of entrepreneurship. Then we categorize creativity and social network research into relational and structural perspectives, with the former emphasizing tie strength and other aspects of relationship quality and the latter emphasizing local and global network structure. We highlight consistencies and inconsistencies and review some of the contingencies that scholars have identified. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research that can potentially resolve some of the existing contradictions.