"Every Industry has its own Mafia"

My Dad has many memorable sayings. One that has stuck in my head is “Every industry has its own Mafia” Now, he didn’t mean that every industry is run by a gang of mobsters or, for instance, that an interior decorator might wake up one day with a severed horse head in their bed, because they’d offended someone in home furnishings at the Liberty store in London. No, he meant that every industry has a group of gate-keepers, its own establishment, that you need to work with if you’re going to make any progress in that industry. I think it holds true to most things. I’d bet landscaping has its own ‘mafia’ or even beer widget manufacturers for that matter.

This brings me round to a book I’ve been reading about Creativity written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The writer attempts to define what makes someone creatively successful. He proposes that a successful creative needs to succeed in three areas: 1. they need natural talent or curiosity; 2. they need access to the appropriate creative domain - i.e the culture, rules, and procedures that pertain to the artistic endeavour they’re pursuing (e.g architecture, painting, or film making); and finally 3. the field which includes the gate keepers (or mafia as my dad would put it)It is the gate-keepers job to decide what new idea or product should be recognised or remembered.

The more established the industry often the stronger the hold of the gate keepers. This has advantages and disadvantages - the gatekeepers can ensure a quality and standard, but it can also contribute to a lack of dynamism through a system of nepotism and favouritism. This is why there is often an energy in new technology because it presents opportunities to groups who wouldn’t have had access to a more established domain.