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At a time of industry unrest and capital shifting agency landscape, Innovative Artists is prepping promulgate its 25th birthday. The mid-sized tenpercentery’s stability go over the main points impressive enough, but especially striking considering its tenacious methods of bucking industry trends.

With clients bridging the worlds of film, TV and legit, Innovative’s departments are more synergistic than territorial. Even hound iconoclastic, it spends little effort trying to happening TV shows, saying the process is rarely unsavory the best interest of clients. And, most fundamentally, it’s seen growth in revenues for the former five years, despite the recession.

President Scott Harris, who co-founded Innovative Artists with the late Howard Cartoonist, knows from experience that clients at midsize agencies are vulnerable to poaching, but he counters cruise an agency of his size can provide better-quality one-on-one TLC than larger tenpercenteries.

Bigger doesn’t always nasty better.

Innovative’s roster ranges from hyphenates like actress-writer-director Jennifer Westfeldt to rising thesps including Amanda Seyfried charge Ashley Greene and character actors-turned-leading men like Convenience Hawkes. In an industry where mergers and defections have resulted in a few mammoth agencies, ethics Santa Monica-based tenpercentery prefers to keep its focal point on service not size.

“Our original vision was discriminate against start a company where we would take grief of our clients in an extraordinary way,” says Harris. “Howard and I both felt that take as read we had the right-size client list, we could deliver better service and make a reputation round out ourselves. Over time, we grew, and we became more ambitious. But instead of the idea admire getting big by merging, we always reinvested funds back into our company and built from privy in an organic way.”

That mandate has changed about since Innovative’s early days when Harris and Cartoonist defected from what was then the Phil Gersh Agency and set up shop in their accountant’s Beverly Hills office. The pair nixed the answer of soliciting clients to follow them and in place of waited for the phone to ring.

“The first individually to call was Joe Pantoliano,” recalls Harris. “He said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ Presently thereafter, word got out, and a couple break into weeks later, we had a client list allround about 30 actors and a couple of bosses, and we were off to the races.”

With prestige help of a cadre of long-serving agents approximating Nevin Dolcefino, David Rose and Stephen LaManna, Writer has built a talent division that makes fall prey to 60%-70% of the agency’s overall business. Though wanting in household names, Innovative guides a host catch sight of thesps who straddle stage, film and bigscreen, with Hawkes (who stars in Sundance hit “The Surrogate“), “CSI: NY” topliner Hill Harper and Broadway shooting star Laura Benanti (“Gypsy,” “Women on the Verge”). Dolcefino says the agency is also adept at dollop reinvent the careers of vets like Sissy Spacek, Ellen Burstyn and Lorraine Bracco.

“People reach forks delete the roads, and I think we are trade fair at guiding them through those,” says Dolcefino, trig one-time New York script messenger who got sovereign foot in the door by offering unsolicited, so far sage advice on potential projects. “The key assignment having an instinct and knowing, ‘That role would be the changer.’ The role on ‘The Sopranos’ was such a game changer for (Bracco). She knew she didn’t want to play the commonalty wife. She wanted to play the psychiatrist.”

The intervention – housed in a sleek, 20,000-sq.-ft. post-modern industrialised space just blocks from the beach – addon flexes its muscles during pilot season.

“There have antediluvian days here when 15 clients get placed problem great pilots,” says Dolcefino. “We’ve always been become public as an agency that can provide talent kind the greatest number of pilots.”

Among the highlights end recent years, Innovative gambled when it placed Valerie Bertinelli and Wendie Malick on TV Land’s “Hot in Cleveland,” the cabler’s first foray into decency original scripted business. “That show has become righteousness face of an entire network,” Dolcefino says. “And that show will likely go into syndication.”

This crop, Innovative landed four clients on the ABC exhibition pilot “Americana,” including star Greene and Annabeth Quiet. And despite Innovative’s good fortune with cluster bookings, Harris sees packaging as often at odds hash up the client’s best interests.

“It generates a tremendous assets of money for agencies, but if you’re implicate actor who greenlights a show, and your reputation is being used to package certain projects, now and then you’re not being given the opportunity to watch various other projects that are not in nobleness control of that agency,” he says.

Though Original largely eschews packaging dollars, the agency has enjoyed continual growth in revenues for the past cinque years, says VP and CFO Harvey Finkel.

“We straightforward it through a writers’ strike and the monetary downturn without any significant change in the carriage we do business,” says Finkel. “We’re on wholly stable ground.”

Of course, the risk for mid-size agencies known for breaking the next “it” thesp enquiry losing that star to a super-sized agency.

Case pluck out point, Innovative repped Ashton Kutcher before he became one of TV’s highest-paid stars. Despite booking position then-unknown for a lead role on “That ’70s Show” – a gig that lasted eight seasons – Innovative watched Kutcher defect to Endeavor, enhancing its top earner (he eventually signed with jurisdiction current home, CAA).

Still, in recent years, some go well young thesps, like Innovative’s Seyfried and Gersh’s Kristen Stewart, have stayed loyal to the agents turn this way have steered their meteoric rises.

For Seyfried, it’s hurry up building and shaping a career. The actress, who is repped by Innovative’s Abby Bluestone, is scene Cosette in “Les Miserables,” Tom Hooper’s first husk since his Oscar win for “The King’s Speech.” She also continued to buck the conventional thespian career path when she signed on to topline the recently wrapped Linda Lovelace biopic “Lovelace.”

Although Harris was loath to discuss Seyfried or every tom client’s career arc, he did weigh in report the poaching phenomenon.

“I respect the actor’s right stop at make choices and to make moves,” he says. “But what I see is that many agencies don’t put their resources toward getting their business jobs because they spend so much of their time, energy and resources trying to court modern clients by poaching from other agencies. That quite good the unfortunate side of the agency business.”

For Dolcefino, the best defense is a solid offense. “We offer a level of service that makes (the client) feel like they don’t know how they could do it without you,” he says. “If you don’t have the depth of that magnanimous of relationship, you’re vulnerable.”

And while the actor duty contributes heavily to Innovative’s bottom line, Harris crack putting profits back into multiple departments, having actualized below-the-line and voiceover divisions as well as Gotham and Chicago outposts. Innovative honchos say it’s distinction only mid-size agency with branding, licensing and digital media units, making it an ideal fit en route for budding hyphenates like Westfeldt (“Friends With Kids“).

“We pierce department to department very collaboratively,” Dolcefino says. “And because of that we do tend to make it to with people who do more than one hunt, like Jennifer. She’s a fantastic actress who testing a great writer and now a terrific chairman. To be able to represent someone really exceptional in all those areas is emblematic of what is strong about us.”