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

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个体科学家之间的合作，这些科学家代表着不同的嵌入组织（例如，大学、公司或政府实体），并且广泛分布在不同的时间和空间。在这样的安排下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，这些团队内部和团队之间的合作已经成为在科学努力中取得成功所必需的核心能力。科学政策早就认识到与跨学科研究相关的挑战。这些挑战来自多个方面；例如，大学和其他组织的部门结构创造了不兼容的隐性规范，这些规范经常阻止或扼杀单位之间的互动。尽管科学研究早就认识到这些挑战，但如何最好地克服它们的问题仍然没有得到充分的回答。鉴于许多对社会至关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用知识体系，以指导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)通信网络，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的大规模高控制现场准实验。每个MTS由三个相互作用的团队组成：法国格勒诺布尔的欧盟商学院学生团队；弗吉尼亚州费尔法克斯的一组美国心理学学生；来自佛罗里达州奥兰多市的一组美国工程专业学生。mts将在三个地点一起工作两个月，将他们的背景和专业知识结合起来，争取时间创新。我们根据领导和沟通网络的条件，操纵和随机分配3个团队的多团队系统，并跟踪这些因素对后续互动和结果的影响。更广泛的影响。该项目为机构层面的决策者提供了一个证据基础，让他们了解如何管理涉及其机构的科学合作。特别是，这项研究揭示了如何创造一种环境，在这种环境中，重要的创新可以迸发出知识的火花。该项目确定了科学团队中成功协作的结构和相互作用的组成部分，这些团队在地理上分布，受复杂的社会和激励力量的影响，并通过信息和通信技术联系起来，利用跨越时空边界的知识进行创新。该项目的第二组更广泛的影响涉及四个群体的教育：(1)未来的科学家，(2)科学政策领袖，(3)多学科的学者，(4)几个跨学科项目的学生。该项目积极培养未来的科学家、工程师、商人和企业家在分布式的、国际化的、多学科的团队中进行合作，并为本科生和研究生开设分布式多学科团队合作的新课程。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，该研究项目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。

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.