Differential effects of knowledge diversity on team innovation: An agent-based modeling

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to reconcile the inconsistent results of prior research on the relationship between knowledge diversity and team innovation. This study suggests a new conceptual approach to separating differentiate dimensions of knowledge diversity, namely intrapersonal knowledge diversity and shared knowledge diversity. The results support knowledge diversity as a two-dimensional concept, and show that intrapersonal knowledge diversity is positively related to team innovation performance, and shared knowledge diversity is not related to team innovation performance. Also, as team duration increase, the efficiency of team innovation decreases, as well as the variances of team innovation performance increases. The present study contributes to literatures by presenting an agent-based model examined different conceptualization of knowledge diversity yield different effects on team processes and outcomes, and simulated how team members transfer their knowledge based on a set of simplistic rules to generate innovative outcome.