What are your thoughts on this?

International Interest In Beatles Study

There is international interest in a study by a New Zealand economics researcher on what drove the Beatles to success. Dr Greg Clydesdale, who specialises in enterprise development, used the British pop group to explore the importance of competition in creativity and innovation. He says the Beatles should be seen as a creative process rather than creative geniuses. “A standout feature of their experience was that their creative improvements were a process of gradual, continuous improvement over time.”
He says this process was enhanced by the structure of the group, as a working team with high levels of exchange, mutually reinforcement and complementary blends of expertise and thinking styles. “This resulted in continuous improvement which in turn resulted in creative genius,” he says. The second force was the element of competition and rivalry. As an example, he cites the Beatles’ desire to outdo their contemporaries, particularly the Beach Boys. “When the Beatles first heard – and analysed – the Beach Boys’ album Pet Sounds, they asked their manager George Martin if they could do as well. He told them they could do better. The Beatles’ response was to produce Sergeant Pepper.”
Dr Clydesdale says fame was a strong incentive but the Beatles achieved it strategically. “They wanted to be bigger than Elvis. But their focus was always a few yards ahead.” He says the rivalry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney was also an important factor and supports earlier research suggesting competition and cooperation can be intertwined. He quotes McCartney as saying: “He'd write ‘Strawberry Fields’ and I’d go away and write ‘Penny Lane’”. Dr Clydesdale says the rivalry was friendly, largely because the rewards were shared: “The whole group benefitted from performing an excellent song. And regardless of which one wrote it, the song went down as a ‘Lennon and McCartney’ composition.”
Dr Clydesdale says the Beatles’ experience is useful in identifying what can drive creativity in business. “Seeing it as a process suggests that experimental studies of just one creative act may have limited value to real world creativity which is often determined by knowledge and routines built up over time.”
His research has appeared in the international Creativity Research Journal. He has also been invited to present his study as a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Amsterdam Centre for Law and Economics in The Hague next month.
Dr Clydesdale is based at from Massey University’s Auckland campus. A copy of his research paper is available at http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/

Excellent. I think we've done the "how" to death, and a bit of "why" is definately needed.
Game theory, which hugely influenced political, economic and military thinking after WW2* works on the basis that the whole will always prosper by the selfish acts of individuals interested only in their own advancement.
And I think The Beatles are a microscopism of that. John wanted to be better than Paul and vice versa. So everyone gained, even Ringo. (the thirdworld of Beatleland   ).
Had John and Paul gone "hang on, lets pool our resources, help George and Ringo become better songwriters" the band would have dissapeared into a mire mediocrity. Thankgod for their selfish bast*rd-like egos.

* there was a doco about it on telly on Sunday

My immediate impression is that Dr Greg Clydesdal wants to sell his theory about enterprise development to various corporations so he can rake in the dough by telling everyone that they, too, can become as successful as the Beatles, if only they follow the Beatles' process.

The fact that he's promoting "competition" over "confidence" is a clue (the capitalist model focuses on the theory of competition, even though each company strives for monopolistic domination). Another clue is dismissing the Beatles as creative geniuses. Ignoring the gifts of individuals and promulgating the notion that "anyone can be Mozart, given the right process" is typical corporate thinking.

I'm always interested in the creative process. I have very much enjoyed reading how Paul and John composed and developed their work. I'm disappointed that, from this write-up anyway, the study leader has chosen to focus on competition. Yes, there was that aspect, and John and Paul often talked about it. But I think confidence has a bigger role in creativity. It takes a lot of nerve to put your own stuff out there, and the Beatles had cheek in spades, even when they didn't "deserve" it. Once they started getting positive feedback (record sales), they went mad. More songs, better songs, more hits. Then George Martin was happy to support them wherever they wanted to go, because he could see they were successful-- on their terms, not his. He started out quite doubtful, but thank goodness "the lads" rebelled.

Also, I think people too often tend to overlook the fact that the Beatles were a band. They were not just the Paul/John songwriting dynamic. I know many people on this board will disagree with me, but I think when that element of cooperation faded around the White Album period, you began getting highly erratic quality. The competition element was in full force, and the quality deteriorated, in my opinion. I think when it returned for Abbey Road, they got a much better album as a result.

Quoted from harihead

Also, I think people too often tend to overlook the fact that the Beatles were a band. They were not just the Paul/John songwriting dynamic. I know many people on this board will disagree with me, but I think when that element of cooperation faded around the White Album period, you began getting highly erratic quality. The competition element was in full force, and the quality deteriorated, in my opinion. I think when it returned for Abbey Road, they got a much better album as a result.

Oooh. Good reading. And you're right, I do disagree (a little)   .
IMO:
I'd put at least 60-70% of The Beatles success down to the Lennon/McCartney songwriting team. In this they were unique. Most everyone else was reliant on one person. The unique image the band presented was of course really important, and the lack of musical prima donnas in George and Ringo was probably also a big help.
I've been pondering (as you do) as to how this happened to The Beatles, and no one else. Are the odds maybe one hundred thousand to one of two great songwriters living near each other, at the same time, and finding each other, and that one chance just happened to be The Beatles? If not them then maybe the odds would have smiled on two lads in some other town on some other day. Was it bound to happen somewhere, sometime?
It can't be just the jolly-sailors-handing-out-records theory, or the musical anglo-irish ancestry, because it didn't happen to other Liverpool bands.  And come to think of it,  it seems that pre-62 it was unique for young British lads to even aspire to be songwriters and performers when everyone else was content to cover american songs or leave the writing to professionals.
Again, just luck of the universe that two young talented guys just happened to meet at an age when they could motivate each other along? If they hadn't met, struggled on in their bedrooms alone, and probably given up songwriting and followed the road of their peers to covers oblivion.
It must be competition, and I can't think of any reason other than the strange workings of the universe that those two guys were in the same place at the same time.
And I think while the band would have suffered without George or Ringo there still would have been a successful Beatles, but without either John or Paul - unthinkable.

Forgot - I don't think the erratic qualities of The White are really down to lack of harmony - more just the fact that it's a double album. Let it Be - maybe, but again that could be down to it just being a very bad idea. Were they anymore harmonious during the Abbey Road Sessions, when you say the quality returned?

Thanks, Kevin! Good conversation.  

Leaving aside the percentage of success contributed per Beatle (I'll have to do some spreadsheets on that at some point I suppose  ), I'd like to cling like a bulldog to the original topic, "the importance of competition in creativity and innovation".

Quoted from Kevin

just luck of the universe that two young talented guys just happened to meet at an age when they could motivate each other along?

My answer to this is an emphatic, "Yes!" I think there really are individuals who stand out--like Mozart and Einstein and Steve Jobs--people who are farting around in their basements and end up having a major influence on their culture or even the world (well, perhaps Mozart didn't use the basement...).

Now, the Beatles are unique in that list of standouts in that they apparently needed a group dynamic to create that change. I think if these two songwriting lads had not met, Paul would have become a teacher, John would have drifted into art, George would have played in band after band until he was forced to find a real job, and Ringo the same. But John didn't just want to have a partner, although he liked that a lot. At that time, he also wanted to have a gang. The Quarrymen (and later the Beatles) served that purpose. (Paul apparently didn't feel the need for anyone else; he was never in any band until John invited him.)

Quoted from Kevin

If they hadn't met, struggled on in their bedrooms alone, and probably given up songwriting and followed the road of their peers to covers oblivion.
It must be competition

Here's where I disagree with your conclusion (and with Dr. Clydesdale above). There were many components to that relationship, and competition was just one aspect. Yes, they talked about competition, but they worked cooperatively, particularly at the beginning. "Writing into each other's noses", as John put it. They did compete with other bands, wanting to write better songs than "Pretty Woman," and so on, but within the group they were amazingly egalitarian, at least in the beginning. It was only after Sgt. Pepper, perhaps due to lack of outside competition, that they began focusing on competing with each other. And I think that element was as destructive to the band as it was helpful.

As performing Beatles, they never tried to upstage each other. Paul and John made sure to feature George, and later Ringo, in their acts. Ringo happily recalls one of the good things about the Beatles is that whoever had the good idea, that's whose idea they'd use. There was openness to constructive criticism-- not just among the Beatles, but also with their producer. Yes, John and Paul provided a foil for each other in composition, and it's a valuable tool. But there are so many elements--competition, critique, inspiration, trust, friendship, safety, not to mention talent-- I feel it's overlooking the uniqueness of their gift to try to pare it down to one element.

Quoted from Kevin

Were they anymore harmonious during the Abbey Road Sessions, when you say the quality returned?

According to George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and other observers, yes, they were.

Quoted from Kevin

Were they anymore harmonious during the Abbey Road Sessions, when you say the quality returned?

They were hardly ever all there at the same time. Paul was there nearly all of the time. I've always thought that it's really 70% Macca's first solo album!

In my opinion The Beatle's success was due to their uniqueness of the time. They were just simply different from all the other music groups in the 60s. They were young, unmarried (apart from John- yet they kept it as a secret), they sang about what they feel rather than patriotic stuff or war songs, they didnt just stand behind the microphone and sing- they moved around, they shouted and yet (thanks to Brian) they were witty, dressed elegantly. Those elements appealed both to older and younger generations and that is why they were successful. Sure enough there was competition between Paul and John but it wasn't a war type-of-thing. I mean, competition is natural. The Beatles were a business, and a business will fail without competition (internal or external).

I do appologize if my post is not really relevent to Dr Greg Clydesdale's research because i am not too sure i perfectly understood him...  

Just my humble thoughts and analysis on the subject. There are several reasons for the success of The Beatles. Including ambition, genius, chance, and chemistry. The nature of the chemistry, as analysed above by Kevin and harihead above, is that they both competed and cooperated. Both were of prime importance, but whether they were of equal importance or which was more important maybe we can't know. But then there's the genius of John and Paul. Seems there was a highly unlikely random chance them both meeting at a garden fete in Liverpool. But it happened. They had their own songwriting reciprocal chemistry and through the overall band chemistry process George developed his own genius by being influenced by John. But when they split up so did the chemistry, along with the ambition to be the greatest because they'd achieved that. If John, Paul and George's genius declined it may because the chemistry was no longer there. So, Clydesdale's theory may be correct if their genius was driven by competion. And therefore maybe the chemistry was more important than the individual genius.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

They were hardly ever all there at the same time. Paul was there nearly all of the time. I've always thought that it's really 70% Macca's first solo album!

I agree with this also. John output was pretty much dried up at the time mostly in part because Yoko was all that he was into. Regardless, regarding Clydesdale's theory, I agree with almost all of what he said except for a few minor points. He stated - "A standout feature of their experience was that their creative improvements were a process of gradual, continuous improvement over time.”. I might take the word 'gradual' out of the equation. When you think of what the Beatles accomplished and how they grew from 'Please, Please Me' to 'Abbey Road' in just 7 short years, thats mind boggling. I cant come up with another band that was even close to that development.

Another minor point that I might disagree with is Clydesdale's assumption that there was no genius in the Beatles efforts. People take the defenition of genius in a lot of different contexts, but I for one think there was a certain amount of genius within the Beatles within the musical realm. For instance, when the Who announced that they wrote the hardest rocking tune ever with 'My Generation', Paul stood back and basically said, 'Is that right? Well, i'll show them', and he writes 'Helter Skelter' (which we all know is leaps harder than My Generation). Did he have to that? Did he have anything to prove by doing it? No, but he did it. I just think that other bands could have tried, but I see most of them failing miserably by doing so. Its just those small, unique things that seperate normal musical entitys from the Beatles, so I truly do think there was some genius in the band. (I just made the example from something Paul did, but I dont want anybody to think that I ment that Paul or his accomplishments were the genius in the band. We all know what John, George, and Ringo were capable of and I was meaning the group and not one individual.)

They just did what they did.

Call it game theory or whatever you like.

Me thinks too many 'Economist Researchers' spend more time listening to the scouse noise than doing their jobs.

Quoted from 366

They just did what they did.

Call it game theory or whatever you like.

Me thinks too many 'Economist Researchers' spend more time listening to the scouse noise than doing their jobs.

You can't deny that The Beatles were (and are) a commercial success. It might be a good idea to find out why they were so extremely successfull. "They just did what they did"? I think that's a bit too simple to state. I think they had a pretty good idea of every next step they should take.

Quoted from Bobber

You can't deny that The Beatles were (and are) a commercial success. It might be a good idea to find out why they were so extremely successfull. "They just did what they did"? I think that's a bit too simple to state. I think they had a pretty good idea of every next step they should take.

Some aspects of the manipulation of The Beatle image disturb me. The Help! video for instance, where they all sit in a row clowning around. That was a serious song, and I always think "did you have to do that - play up to the old laughing-Beatles image." To me it seems a bit demeaning. Did some TV producer say "come on boys - do The Beatlle thing - act like clowns"
Ditto that picture of The Beatles in '69 (?) clowning around and pushing each other off the ledge. George especially looks like he's fed up and is ready to punch someone.
The image was important as their music in Beatlemania. Sometimes it all seems too contrived and premeditated. I know most rock bands have a contrived image (it's all part of the game) but sometimes The Beatles more than most come across as performing monkees (bom bom)

George hardly ever looked happy on pictures, especially in the later years. Of course their image was important and they knew that. They even used it.

It would have been funny to see the beatles in Hamburg when they
dressed in ridicolous clothes. John with a toliet seat round his neck!