Team composition for solving complex problems

Abstract

Most high value innovations that provide a sustainable competitive advantage are likely to be found by combining highly complex and interdependent knowledge elements (Fleming and Sorenson, 2001). This is because firstly, most undiscovered and difficult to imitate innovations are more likely to exist among complex interdependent combinations. Secondly, complex interactions are more likely to yield breakthroughs that go beyond “normal” scientific enquiry (Schilling and Green, 2011). However the flip side is that attempting complex and interdependent combinations most often leads to a “catastrophe”: most of the attempts lead to wrong alleys and which alleys are likely to be wrong is unpredictable ex ante (Kauffman, 1993).