Location
260-051, Owen G. Glenn Building
Start Date
12-15-2014
Description
This study investigates how individuals’ knowledge structure affects their new product ideation outcome. Because individuals who possess diverse knowledge can potentially create more novel recombination, broad knowledge has been touted as the key driver of innovation. Yet, a shallow grasp of a wide array of knowledge might be sufficient to generate novel ideas but are insufficient to produce innovative ideas that should also be useful and economically feasible. Deep knowledge complements broad knowledge by aiding individuals to effectively combine diverse set of knowledge and to identify constraints of potential solutions. Consequently, individuals with both broad and deep knowledge are expected to outperform those who only possess broad knowledge in innovation tasks. Our findings in a new product idea crowdsourcing community are consistent with our predictions: knowledge breadth feeds into novelty of ideas, but its effect on usefulness and innovativeness of ideas is contingent on the presence of deep knowledge.
Recommended Citation
Hwang, Elina; Singh, Param; and Argote, Linda, "Jack of All, Master of Some: The Contingent Effect of Knowledge Breadth on Innovation" (2014). ICIS 2014 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2014/proceedings/SocialMedia/16
Jack of All, Master of Some: The Contingent Effect of Knowledge Breadth on Innovation
260-051, Owen G. Glenn Building
This study investigates how individuals’ knowledge structure affects their new product ideation outcome. Because individuals who possess diverse knowledge can potentially create more novel recombination, broad knowledge has been touted as the key driver of innovation. Yet, a shallow grasp of a wide array of knowledge might be sufficient to generate novel ideas but are insufficient to produce innovative ideas that should also be useful and economically feasible. Deep knowledge complements broad knowledge by aiding individuals to effectively combine diverse set of knowledge and to identify constraints of potential solutions. Consequently, individuals with both broad and deep knowledge are expected to outperform those who only possess broad knowledge in innovation tasks. Our findings in a new product idea crowdsourcing community are consistent with our predictions: knowledge breadth feeds into novelty of ideas, but its effect on usefulness and innovativeness of ideas is contingent on the presence of deep knowledge.