Philip Harvey Birnbaum-More

This laboratory study of ideation in emergent groups is based on a year-long ethnographic study of 12 emergent groups to identify practices they used in knowledge integration for solving novel problems under time pressure (Majchrzak, Birnbaum-More, & Faraj, 2012) and for building dynamic capabilities for use in future novel problem solving (Birnbaum-More & Majchrzak, 2012). The practices we identified for successfully bridging knowledge boundaries we termed “expertise”. We compared the results in both the number of new ideas and the most innovative ideas generated for groups of student subjects using the “expertise” manipulation in comparison with the alternative formal intervention previously identified in the literature that we termed “simple rules”.

We examine the development of dynamic capabilities in the form of replicable practices used in collaborations among lower echelon employees to provide upper echelon decision makers with options to quickly and efficiently reconfigure their resources to solve new problems and to take advantage of opportunities. The dynamic capabilities built are the sets of practices used to create tensegrity in balancing the tensions inherent in lower echelon groups made up of strangers with diverse perspectives working under time pressure to build absorptive capacity, align goals, and provide participation incentives. The practices we identified resulted in strategic options that were implemented. We studied 12 lower echelon strategy formulation groups over time to identify common tensions for building absorptive capacity, aligning goals, and providing participation incentives and then identified practices from the literature that create tensegrity by balancing the tensions. We used qualitative comparative analysis to identify configurations of tensegrity practices that were associated with implemented strategic options from those that were not. Implications for theory and practice of developing dynamic capabilities in lower echelon groups are provided.

Using the concept of multiknowledge individuals and a cognitive perspective, the present study investigates the role that team members with knowledge of both marketing and technology play in helping bridge the knowledge gap between team members with knowledge in only one area and how bridging multiknowledge individuals affects team performance. We sampled 62 teams from manufacturing firms rated for their technical excellence by the Korean Government. The teams were from the electronics, electrical equipment, material, machinery, chemical, textile, computer, software, and information technology industries. We used confirmatory factor analysis to check for reliability and validity of the variables that were satisfactory. We analyzed the variables using a structural equation model and found that the greater the proportion of multiknowledge individuals in the team, the more team members exchanged information and that information sharing increased product innovativeness. We also found that the greater the proportion of multiknowledge individuals in the team, the more efficient the team was in achieving its time schedule independent of any information sharing effect. These results imply that multiknowledge individuals help bridge the communication gap between more specialized team members share information. However, information sharing was not significantly related to meeting time schedules suggesting that product innovativeness and meeting schedules may be two independent results that are unrelated to each other in the Korean context.

Knowledge differences impede the work of cross-functional teams by making knowledge integration difficult, especially when the teams are faced with novelty. One approach in the literature for overcoming these difficulties, which we refer to as the traverse approach, is for team members to identify, elaborate, and then explicitly confront the differences and

dependencies across the knowledge boundaries. This approach emphasizes deep dialogue and requires significant resources and time. In an exploratory in-depth longitudinal study of three quite different cross-functional teams, we found that the teams were able to co-create a solution without needing to identify, elaborate, and confront differences and dependencies

between the specialty areas. Our analysis of the extensive team data collected over time surfaced practices that minimized teams’ differences during the problem-solving process. We suggest that these practices helped the team to transcend knowledge differences rather than traverse them. Characteristic of these practices is that they avoided interpersonal conflict, fostered the rapid co-creation of intermediate scaffolds, encouraged continued creative engagement and flexibility to repeatedly modify solution ideas, and fostered personal responsibility for translating personal knowledge to collective knowledge. The contrast between these two approaches to knowledge integration—traverse versus transcend—suggests the need for more nuanced theorizing about the use of boundary objects, the nature of dialogue, and the role of organizational embeddedness in understanding how knowledge differences are integrated.

Key words: innovation; knowledge integration; emergent teams; agile teams; group creativity; cross-functional teams.

The October 2007 firestorm in San Diego provided the best response to a natural disaster in U.S. history according to the Federal Government's after action report. This article analyzes two actions within this overall disaster response and draws conclusions for senior managers faced with responding to emergencies with new technology.