What the Music Industry Teaches us About Creative Collaboration

Beatlemania swept the world three decades before she was born. Jackson Browne sold millions of albums before she learned how to play the guitar. And The Killers performed in sold-out stadium arenas well before her first gig.

But within the last few years, Phoebe Bridgers has become a household singer-songwriter name, collaborating with some of the biggest artists in the music industry and selling out venues worldwide.

So what does Phoebe Bridgers have to do with product innovation and design? 

The Nature of the Industry

The music scene is one of the most collaborative and communal industries - from writing and performing to producing and touring. Musicians learn from and build off of each other. The art is passed from one creator to another. 

It is not uncommon for an artist to feature another singer or performer on a song or album. But behind-the-scenes collaborations are much more prevalent than we might realize. Musicians seem to co-create more than any others in the professional world. Producers like Shawn Everett work with hundreds of artists and musicians each year. Bands tour the world with teams of performers playing, practicing, and learning the art together.

Since 2017, Phoebe Bridgers has collaborated with stars including (but not limited to) Paul McCartney, The National, Jackson Browne, The Killers, Taylor Swift, and Shawn Everett. Some of the most recent synergetic creations can be heard in songs such as Paul McCartney’s Seize the Day, the Killers’ Runaway Horses, and Jackson Browne’s My Cleveland Heart, as well as the EP albums of Boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center.

Though her indie rock/emo folk style is debatably different from those of her recent collaborators, Phoebe understands the value of learning from those within and adjacent to her space. She is talented and creative in her own right, but knows there is more to be had.  

Figure 1: Illustration of Phoebe Bridgers’ Collaborative Network

In an interesting and unique way, artists and performers like Phoebe Bridgers collaborate with their competition. As amazing as playing music for a living must be, it is still a job and artists need to sell albums and fill seats for the show to continue on. Competition, rivalries, and egos are as strong in the music industry as they are between brands or in product design studios. Yet artists and performers are eager to collaborate and co-create. Such collaborative products have proven that “the [chord] is greater than the sum of the [notes]”.

Explore through Collaboration 

Collaboration is a critical part of the creative process. Most ideas and concepts are polished through the efforts of many individuals. A diversity of thought, interpretation, and creativity can help lead to a better fit product or design. 

Jonah Lehrer has suggested that when “trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed. Few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside of [your] areas of expertise” [1].

The concept of collaboration is nothing new. Our universities and businesses are organized into groups of teams. We collaborate with our inner circles frequently. But, a different collaborative approach begins by reassessing with whom and where we are collaborating. 

As a team of designers, it is undoubtedly beneficial to collaborate with other designers. But there is also a bank of knowledge and ideas to be collected from outside our immediate groups - or in other words from our “competition”. This competition does not need to be a rival company - it could be other departments within your company or university. 

For example, though individuals working within finance, marketing, sales, and human resources might not have formal design or engineering backgrounds, they can provide the cross-pollination that your idea might need to blossom. Great ideas can come from unexpected people or places. Rather than dismissing the potential contributions of “non-experts”, harvest input from all.  

Capitalizing on Talent and Community

An African proverb teaches, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Meaningful products - products that truly resonate with consumers - result from the input and effort of many contributors. Evaluating a problem together, from a range of vantage points, can provide the perspectives and ideas that generate solutions. This can mean leaning on others and encouraging those around you to share the creative load. 

Malcom Gladwell has written extensively about capitalization rate, which is a group’s ability to capitalize on their human potential. This concept has been presented in many of his talks and further expanded in his book Outliers: The Story of Success. He suggests that in many cases, the capitalization rate is lower than should be expected. 

“We have a scarcity of achievement… not because we have a scarcity of talent. We have a scarcity of achievement because we’re squandering our talent. And that’s not bad news, that’s good news. Because it says that this scarcity is not something we have to live with. It’s something we can do something about” [2].

We do not have a scarcity of talented designers and engineers, but we are squandering our potential to collaborate and cross-pollinate. Rather than letting our expertise or professional experience hinder our eagerness to learn from others, we need to recognize that new ideas and creative solutions can be found from non-experts or from those outside our immediate circles. 

As is consistently proven in art and music creation, the collaborative input from a variety of individuals and communities can lead to unforeseen and beautiful results. As Phoebe Bridgers has shown, there is immense value in collaborating with others in and adjacent to our space. 

Widen your collaborative community to increase your capitalization rate. Seek inspiration from experts and non-experts alike. Be open and eager to learn from your competition.

References:

[1] Lehrer, Jonah. How to be Creative. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846

[2] Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. See also Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcMKLwVlpJk

Photos: 

[1] https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-inside-disco-house-167491/

[2] Musical web created by Jeffrey Sorenson

[3] https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-writing-on-pink-sticky-notes-3854816/