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We build a social structural model of fame, which departs from the atomistic view of prior literature where creativity is the sole driver of fame in creative markets. We test the model in a significant empirical context: 90 pioneers of the early 20th century (1910–25) abstract art movement. We find that an artist in a brokerage rather than a closure position was likely to become more famous. This effect was not, however, associated with the artist’s creativity, which we measured using both objective computational methods and subjective expert evaluations, and which was not itself related to fame. Rather than creativity, brokerage networks were associated with cosmopolitan identities—broker’s alters were likely to differ more from each other’s nationalities--and this was the key social-structural driver of fame.

This on-line appendix contains more details on the sampling process, more details on the sample, a comparison to a matched sample of Canadians, more technical details on various measures and procedures, and further robustness analysis.

We use creativity theory to analyze the effects of occupational job variety and industry variety on invention quality and entrepreneurial earnings. We test our ideas with survey data from 770 inventor-entrepreneurs who commercialized their own inventions. Results suggest that occupational and industry variety substitute for each other in positively affecting invention quality whereas a lack of industry variety is associated with greater entrepreneurial earnings. Results are consistent with the idea that high levels of both occupational and industry variety enables the generation and discovery of inventions, but these ideas are usually not technically feasible or financially viable.