Passing the Torch: Exploring how Tradition and Innovation Influence Coopetition among Street Performers

Abstract

Understanding how and why firms concurrently compete and cooperate with each other represents an important and growing area of study. This research centres on how firms engage in coopetition. However, this does not account for how much of the modern world works – independently. Through an inductive field study of 80 New Orleans street performers, we explore how and why independent creative workers engage in competition and/or cooperation. In so doing, we advance theory on coopetition by extending its explanations to the individual level. We theorize the well‐established nature of creative industries encourages the belief in the need for deviating from the status quo by engaging in creativity and innovation, which we refer to as a trailblazing mindset. At the same time, we find that the accumulation of a long history of creative practices also fosters traditions. We theorize that tradition encourages the belief in the need to act as vested actors, or custodians, by passing work traditions from one generation to the next to allow the tradition to endure, which we refer to as the torchbearing mindset. Thus, torchbearing fosters cooperation while trailblazing fosters competition.