Innovate Against Time: Drivers and Mechanisms of Knowledge Innovation Within and Across Organizations

与时俱进创新：组织内部和组织间知识创新的驱动因素和机制

• 批准号: 1063901
• 负责人: Leslie DeChurch
• 金额: $ 41.48万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-10-01 至 2014-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1063901&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Innovate; Against; Time; Drivers; Mechanisms

Many of the most urgent and complex problems facing society today require collaboration among large numbers of individual scientists possessing diverse expertise, representing different embedding organizations (e.g., universities, corporations, or government entities), and widely distributed across time and space. Scientists working together in such arrangements are often called science teams, and there is accordingly an increasing realization that collaboration within and among these teams has become a core competency required to succeed in scientific endeavors. Science policy has long recognized the challenges associated with interdisciplinary research. These challenges arise from multiple sources; for example, the departmental structure of universities and other organizations creates incompatible tacit norms which often prevent or stifle interaction across units. Despite the fact that science research has long recognized these challenges, the question of how best to overcome them remains inadequately answered. Given that many of the problems of greatest importance to society require science teams that cross multiple boundaries, it has become imperative that social science develop a concrete body of practical knowledge on how to design and structure synergistic systems of teams to achieve scientific research goals.Toward this aim, this project answers the overarching question: How should (a) leadership structures and (b) communication networks be designed to best facilitate the innovation of knowledge in multiteam systems (MTSs). To address this question, a multi-university international research team is conducting a large-scale highly controlled field quasi-experiment involving more than 100 MTSs. Each MTS is comprised of three interacting teams: a team of EU business students in Grenoble, France; a team of US psychology students in Fairfax, VA; and a team of US engineering students in Orlando, FL. MTSs are working together for two months from three locations, conjoining their backgrounds and expertise sets to innovate against time. We manipulate and randomly assign 3-team multiteam systems to conditions of leadership and communication networks and track the impact of these factors on the interactions and outcomes that follow. Broader Impacts. This project develops an evidentiary basis to inform policymakers at the institution level on how to manage scientific collaborations involving their institutions. In particular, this study sheds new light on how to create the context within which the essential innovation can spark into knowledge. The project identifies the structural and interactional building blocks of successful collaboration in scientific teams that are geographically distributed, affected by complex social and motivational forces, and linked through information and communications technology to innovate using knowledge across temporal and spatial boundaries. A second set of broader impacts of the project concern the education of four communities: (1) future scientists, (2) science-policy leaders, (3) academics in multiple disciplines, and (4) students in several interdisciplinary programs. The project actively trains future scientists, engineers, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs to collaborate in distributed, international, multidisciplinary teams and creates new curricula in distributed multidisciplinary teamwork to be taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The study's results support a much-needed collaborative theory of team structure and leadership. Lastly, the research program also reaches out directly to science policy leaders by offering a science leadership course through George Mason University.

当今社会面临的许多最紧迫和最复杂的问题需要大量拥有不同专业知识的科学家之间的合作，代表不同的嵌入组织（例如，大学、公司或政府实体），并且跨越时间和空间广泛分布。在这种安排中一起工作的科学家通常被称为科学团队，因此越来越多的人认识到，这些团队内部和之间的合作已经成为科学努力取得成功所需的核心能力。科学政策早就认识到与跨学科研究相关的挑战。这些挑战来自多个来源;例如，大学和其他组织的部门结构产生了不相容的默认规范，这些规范往往阻止或扼杀了各单位之间的互动。 尽管科学研究早就认识到这些挑战，但如何最好地克服这些挑战的问题仍然没有得到充分的回答。考虑到许多对社会最重要的问题需要跨越多个边界的科学团队，社会科学必须发展一套具体的实践知识，即如何设计和构建团队的协同系统，以实现科学研究目标。为了实现这一目标，本项目回答了首要问题：如何设计（a）领导结构和（B）沟通网络，以最好地促进多团队系统（MTS）中的知识创新。 为了解决这个问题，一个由多所大学组成的国际研究小组正在进行一项涉及100多个MTS的大规模高度受控的现场准实验。每个MTS都由三个相互作用的团队组成：法国格勒诺布尔的欧盟商科学生团队;弗吉尼亚州费尔法克斯的美国心理学学生团队;佛罗里达州奥兰多的美国工程专业学生团队。 我们操纵并随机分配3团队多团队系统的领导和沟通网络的条件，并跟踪这些因素对随后的互动和结果的影响。更广泛的影响。该项目为机构一级的决策者提供了一个证据基础，使他们了解如何管理涉及其机构的科学合作。 特别是，这项研究揭示了新的光如何创造的背景下，基本的创新可以火花到知识。该项目确定了科学团队成功合作的结构和互动组成部分，这些团队在地理上分布广泛，受到复杂的社会和动机力量的影响，并通过信息和通信技术联系起来，利用知识进行跨时空的创新。该项目的第二组更广泛的影响涉及四个社区的教育：（1）未来的科学家，（2）科学政策领导者，（3）多学科的学者，（4）几个跨学科项目的学生。该项目积极培训未来的科学家，工程师，企业家和企业家在分布式，国际化，多学科团队中合作，并创建分布式多学科团队合作的新课程，在本科和研究生阶段教授。 这项研究的结果支持了一个急需的团队结构和领导力的合作理论。 最后，该研究计划还通过乔治梅森大学提供科学领导力课程，直接接触科学政策领导者。