Understanding Team Knowledge Production: The Interrelated Roles of Technology and Expertise

Teamwork is an increasingly important aspect of knowledge production. In particular, factors influencing team formation relative to the composition of expertise are crucial for both organizational performance and for informing policy. In this paper, I draw attention to technology access as a highly influential factor impacting expertise in team formation. I examine the hack of Microsoft Kinect as an exogenous event that suddenly reduced motion-sensing technology costs. I show that great reductions in technology costs substitute for ex ante optimal involvement of area specialists and facilitate involvement of outside-area specialists through collaboration with researchers with broader knowledge—generalists. In other words, technology costs influence the composition of expertise in teamwork, with sufficiently large reductions leading to knowledge creation that combines more broadly across knowledge areas. These findings have important implications for organizations and policy makers in crafting incentives f...

[1]  Benjamin F. Jones,et al.  The Knowledge Trap: Human Capital and Development Reconsidered , 2008 .

[2]  R. Solow.  A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth , 1956 .

[3]  G. King,et al.  Multivariate Matching Methods That Are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding , 2011 .

[4]  Scott Stern,et al.  Climbing Atop the Shoulders of Giants: The Impact of Institutions on Cumulative Research , 2006, American Economic Review.

[5]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  Changing Incentives to Publish , 2011, Science.

[6]  Avi Goldfarb,et al.  Understanding the Changing Structure of Scientific Inquiry , 2016 .

[7]  Andrew B. Hargadon,et al.  Technology brokering and innovation in a product development firm. , 1997 .

[8]  R. Nelson.  The Role of Knowledge in R&D Efficiency , 1982 .

[9]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science , 2016, Manag. Sci..

[10]  Heidi L. Williams.  Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome , 2010, Journal of Political Economy.

[11]  Chiara Franzoni,et al.  Crowd Science: The Organization of Scientific Research in Open Collaborative Projects , 2014 .

[12]  Benjamin F. Jones.  The Burden of Knowledge and the &Apos;Death of the Renaissance Man&Apos;: Is Innovation Getting Harder? , 2005 .

[13]  Jasjit Singh,et al.  Lone Inventors as Source of Breakthroughs: Myth or Reality? , 2009, Manag. Sci..

[14]  Daniel A. Levinthal,et al.  ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY: A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING AND INNOVATION , 1990 .

[15]  G. King,et al.  Causal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching , 2012, Political Analysis.

[16]  Benjamin F. Jones,et al.  Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Figs. S1 to S3 References the Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge , 2022 .

[17]  Philippe Aghion,et al.  Academic Freedom, Private-Sector Focus, and the Process of Innovation , 2005 .

[18]  Charles I. Jones,et al.  R & D-Based Models of Economic Growth , 1995, Journal of Political Economy.

[19]  Benjamin L. Hallen.  The Causes and Consequences of the Initial Network Positions of New Organizations: From Whom Do Entrepreneurs Receive Investments? , 2008 .

[20]  Ezra W. Zuckerman,et al.  Networks, Diversity, and Productivity: The Social Capital of Corporate R&D Teams , 2001 .

[21]  Walter W. Powell,et al.  Knowledge Networks as Channels and Conduits: The Effects of Spillovers in the Boston Biotechnology Community , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[22]  Of Mice and Academics: Examining the Effect of Openness on Innovation , 2016 .

[23]  Benjamin F. Jones.  As Science Evolves, How Can Science Policy? , 2010, Innovation Policy and the Economy.

[24]  Paula E. Stephan,et al.  The Impact of Information Technology on Academic Scientists' Productivity and Collaboration Patterns , 2010, Manag. Sci..

[25]  I. Cockburn,et al.  Absorptive Capacity, Coauthoring Behavior, and the Organization of Research in Drug Discovery , 2003 .

[26]  Benjamin F. Jones,et al.  Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact , 2013, Science.

[27]  R. Freeman,et al.  NORC at the University of Chicago The University of Chicago Collaborating with People Like Me : Ethnic Coauthorship within the United States , 2015 .

[28]  Samir Elhedhli,et al.  The Effectiveness of Simple Decision Heuristics: Forecasting Commercial Success for Early-Stage Ventures , 2006, Manag. Sci..