Team structure and invention impact under high knowledge diversity: An empirical examination of computer workstation industry

Recombining highly diverse knowledge has great potential due to its novelty but challenging due to cognitive limitations and opportunism of inventor team members. This study considers how a team's social and knowledge structures can mitigate the challenges in recombining highly diverse knowledge. Recombining highly diverse knowledge yields the most impactful inventions when there is a large productivity gap among inventors with similar technological experience or when the team members have prior ties but possess dissimilar technological experience. This study utilizes a sample of 12,808 patents in the computer workstation related domains between 1980 and 1996 and constructs the knowledge and team level variables. We extend insights from the firm-level knowledge-based view by offering theoretical rationales at the team level to counter the diminishing invention impact at high levels of knowledge diversity as predicted by the knowledge-based view. Both the direct and interaction effects at the inventor team level advances our understanding of the different roles the inventor team plays in knowledge sharing, coordination, and integration.