TY - JOUR
T1 - The strength of the strongest ties in collaborative problem solving
AU - De Montjoye, Yves Alexandre
AU - Stopczynski, Arkadiusz
AU - Shmueli, Erez
AU - Pentland, Alex
AU - Lehmann, Sune
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Piotr Sapiezynski for his help in data collection and insights regarding wifi data, Vedran Sekara for his help in data collection, and Luc Rocher for his help with the network visualizations. We also thank the students for participating in the experiment. Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye thanks the Belgian American Educational Foundation (B.A.E.F.) for its financial support. This research was partially sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-09-2-0053. Views and conclusions in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Laboratory.
PY - 2014/6/20
Y1 - 2014/6/20
N2 - Complex problem solving in science, engineering, and business has become a highly collaborative endeavor. Teams of scientists or engineers collaborate on projects using their social networks to gather new ideas and feedback. Here we bridge the literature on team performance and information networks by studying teams' problem solving abilities as a function of both their within-team networks and their members' extended networks. We show that, while an assigned team's performance is strongly correlated with its networks of expressive and instrumental ties, only the strongest ties in both networks have an effect on performance. Both networks of strong ties explain more of the variance than other factors, such as measured or self-evaluated technical competencies, or the personalities of the team members. In fact, the inclusion of the network of strong ties renders these factors non-significant in the statistical analysis. Our results have consequences for the organization of teams of scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers tackling today's most complex problems.
AB - Complex problem solving in science, engineering, and business has become a highly collaborative endeavor. Teams of scientists or engineers collaborate on projects using their social networks to gather new ideas and feedback. Here we bridge the literature on team performance and information networks by studying teams' problem solving abilities as a function of both their within-team networks and their members' extended networks. We show that, while an assigned team's performance is strongly correlated with its networks of expressive and instrumental ties, only the strongest ties in both networks have an effect on performance. Both networks of strong ties explain more of the variance than other factors, such as measured or self-evaluated technical competencies, or the personalities of the team members. In fact, the inclusion of the network of strong ties renders these factors non-significant in the statistical analysis. Our results have consequences for the organization of teams of scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers tackling today's most complex problems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84903161977&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05277
DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05277
M3 - مقالة
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 4
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
M1 - 5277
ER -