Open Ties and Deep Success

Innovative teams face the paradox of relying on experience to generate novelty. This article proposes that network openness, the lack of closure with strong ties, is conducive for a wide range of success measures. We argue that openness helps to recognize and realize successful novel combinations, more so than weak bridging, brokerage, and closed ties. Prior scholarship has neglected the creative potential of open and strong relationships because it assumed that strong ties are always closed, and only weak ties bridge diverse structural locations crucial to innovative performance. We develop two team network measures of openness: density and depth of strong, open triads. We use the population of jazz musicians’ careers as represented by their recording sessions to show that networks rich in strong, open ties are more prevalent than expected under a configuration model. We also show that while network openness is a consistent predictor of success measured on six different dimensions, brokerage is not. Furthermore, we show that openness that contributes to innovative performance is the result of organizing effort as opposed to lucky accidents. We discuss implications for project teams and organizations where innovation is crucial.