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Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 2341 (2008) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/sej.40
THE EMERGENCE OF TEAM CREATIVE COGNITION: THE ROLE OF DIVERSE OUTSIDE TIES, SOCIOCOGNITIVE NETWORK CENTRALITY, AND TEAM EVOLUTION
CHRISTINA E. SHALLEY1* and JILL E. PERRY-SMITH2
1 College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. 2 Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
We introduce the concept of team creative cognition and discuss how it is transferred and infused within the team to enable the teams creativity. Specically, we propose that diverse personal ties outside of the team shape and strengthen individual team members creative muscle, and that this individual creative cognition is infused within the team through modeling processes, ultimately resulting in team creative cognition. We further propose that team member centrality in the teams sociocognitive network, as well as the evolution of the entrepreneurial team, are critical to fully understanding the infusion process and the resulting emergence of team creative cognition. Copyright 2008 Strategic Management Society.
INTRODUCTION
Understanding ways to enable employees to be more creative has become increasingly important given creativitys critical role for the initiation and survival of rms in complex and competitive environments (Amabile, 1988; Mumford et al., 2002; Nonaka, 1991). For entrepreneurs in particular, creativity is central; yet little conceptual or empirical work has examined how creativity affects the creation, recognition, or exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. To date, the majority of the conceptual and empirical research conducted on creativity has been focused on the creativity of individual employees (see Shalley, Zhou, and Oldham, 2004, for a recent review). This makes sense as many
Keywords: team creativity; creative cognition; social networks; diversity *Correspondence to: Christina E. Shalley, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 West Peachtree St., Atlanta, GA 30308, U.S.A. E-mail: christina.shalley@mgt.gatech.edu
creative ideas come from individuals; however, given that individuals are increasingly working within teams, it is important to determine how teams can be more creative. For example, although the focus of early entrepreneurship literature has been on the lone entrepreneur as the developer of the next breakthrough idea, more and more research in this area has recognized the role of entrepreneurial teams, particularly postinvention and pre-start-up (e.g., Chowdhury, 2004; Kamm et al., 1990). For example, high tech start-ups are generally driven not just by a single entrepreneur, but involve teams of individuals working together to move a new technology from idea to commercialization (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991). Thus, our focus is on the team as the unit of analysis. According to Kurtzberg and Amabile (2000: 289), research on team-level creativity must explore the evolution of ideas as they progress from one mind to another. Our arguments presented in this conceptual piece answer this call by exploring how imagination, insights, and creative ideas develop
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and evolve from one mind to another. In order for a team to solve problems creatively, it is not just a matter of assembling a collection of individuals who hold diverse views, have varied backgrounds, or are considered to be creative types. We propose that what is key is how team members approach problem solving and how member creative problemsolving approaches transfer from the individual to the team and become collective, synergistic cognitive processes of the team. In particular, we introduce the concept of team creative cognition. Team creative cognition is a shared repertoire of cognitive processes among team members that provides a framework for how the team approaches problems creatively. We discuss how team creative cognition is transferred and infused within the team, starting with individual members and ultimately residing within the team. As such, our central research question is how creative problem solving comes to reside in and be owned by the team. Team creative cognition is particularly critical for entrepreneurial teams, because creativity is not just a one-time event of discovering entrepreneurial opportunities, but is important throughout the startup process. While many assume entrepreneurs are creative given that they have identied new opportunities, entrepreneurial teams also need to think creatively in identifying, approaching, and resolving problems related to their business ideas. These teams require not only the novel combination of existing knowledge, but also the generation of new knowledge and solutions. The discovery of new and more complex ideas requires team members taking fresh perspectives and trying to view the situation in unusual and novel ways via creative cognition. In addition, entrepreneurial teams, although not part of a larger organization, do not act in isolation; rather team members are shaped by a broader context of informal personal relationships in their environment outside of the team. Specically, individual members are embedded in a system of personal relationships that are interlocked and inuence behavior (Oh, Labianca, and Chung, 2006). We view these external interactions as a way of starting the infusion process by affecting the creative cognition of individual members. We develop our ideas in the sections that follow. We start with individual creative cognition and move to the development and transfer of team creative cognition through an infusion process that involves implicit modeling processes. We also discuss how this infusion process can be affected by the teams
Copyright 2008 Strategic Management Society
GENERAL OVERVIEW
In the literature, one way creativity has been dened is as an outcome where the focus has been on the novelty and potential usefulness of generated ideas (e.g., Amabile, 1983; Mumford, 2000; Shalley, 1991; Zhou, 1998). These can include ideas related to solving problems, new practices, or new procedures, as well as ideas about new products or services. As such, creativity involves imagination and insight that can ultimately lead to inventions and innovations. Creativity is a necessary, but not sufcient, ingredient for innovation. That is, creative ideas represent the foundation from which innovations can arise, but innovation requires political resources, emotional support, and gaining buy-in to the ideas, as well as obtaining the necessary resources required in implementing these ideas. In this way, creativity is related to innovation, but distinct from this concept, and is an importantalthough at times imperfect precursor to innovation. Obviously, entrepreneurs need to be creative to generate new opportunities and come up with the big idea. However, this is just one application of when creativity is important. Another way that creativity has been dened is as a process (e.g., Drazin, Glynn, and Kazanjian, 1999; Shalley et al., 2004; Shalley and Zhou, 2008). Creativity as a process requires employees overall engagement in creative processes at work, which can include both cognitive and behavioral processes. It is
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within the team, the result is team creative cognition, a team-level phenomenon. See Figure 1 for a graphical depiction of our propositions. We start by conceptualizing and dening creative cognition.
CREATIVE COGNITION
Individual creative cognition The study of individual creative cognition has its roots in cognitive psychology (Finke, Ward, and Smith, 1992; Smith, Ward, and Finke, 1995), in which the focus is on the fundamental cognitive operations that produce creative thought. This area of research has focused on conducting experimental studies to examine the cognitive processes that operate when people are engaged in a variety of tasks that require the generation of novel ideas. A central premise of creative cognition is that all individuals have some capacity to be creative, in contrast to trait-based approaches to creativity that assume that some individuals are more creative than others due to innate personality characteristics (see Barron and Harrington, 1981 for a review). Although there may be individual differences in how creative someone is in general, the difference between one person who is more creative than another can be explained in part by variation in the use of speciable processes or combinations of processes, the intensity of applications of such processes, the richness or exibility of stored cognitive structures to which the processes are applied, the capacity of memory systems (such as working memory), and other known and observable fundamental cognitive principles (Ward, Smith, and Finke, 1999: 191). In order to produce creative outcomes, individuals rst need to engage in certain cognitive subprocesses that help facilitate their creative problem solving. For example, they may examine unknown areas to nd better or unique approaches to a problem, seek out novel ways of performing a task, and link ideas from multiple sources. A great deal of research has been conducted on individual creative cognition, with many of the researchers looking at these subsets of creative cognitive processes in somewhat different ways or examining only certain subsets of cognitive processes (e.g., Basudur, 2004; Basudur, Graen, and Green, 1982; Baughman and Mumford, 1995; Finke et al., 1992; Koestler, 1964; Runco and Chand, 1995). As such, we now are synthesizing a variety of approaches to studying individual creative cognition and organizing the literature into
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two broad sets of generative and exploratory processes. Specically, creative cognition involves: 1) problem identication and formulation; and 2) conceptual breadth. Each of these subprocesses, and their various components, will be discussed in this article. It is important to note that no one cognitive process within each set is necessary, nor sufcient, in and of itself, but it is the use of a combination of a number of these creative cognitive processes that encompasses creative cognition. Problem identication and formulation rst involves identifying that a problem or opportunity exists. Thus, creative cognition involves opportunity recognition as well as the discovery and development of new opportunities or problems. Once a problem is identied, the problem or issue can be phrased in multiple ways (Reiter-Palmon et al., 1997; Sternberg and Lubart, 1991). In order to frame the problem broadly, individuals need to be skilled in identifying the key elements of a problem, and they need to gure out how the different pieces or parts of the problem t together. Essentially, problem
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identication and formulation helps highlight the full nuances of a problem for the problem solver, and can involve dening the problem in both concrete and abstract ways (Sternberg, 1999). Conceptual breadth is probably the cognitive subprocess that is most often considered when thinking about how to creatively solve problems, and research has found that time and effort spent in this set is signicantly related to creativity (Illies and Reiter-Palmon, 2004). This set of creative cognitive processes involves the wide search within and across categories of knowledge for diverse information that can be used to creatively explore problems (i.e., includes generative and exploratory processes). As such, this subprocess includes two very important component processes that problem solvers can cycle back and forth between: conceptual combination and conceptual expansion. Conceptual combination is the synthesis or merging of previously separate concepts to create a new idea. When separate concepts are combined, novel properties of each can emerge (Koestler,
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capabilities and together nd ways to form new ideas that are more than just the sum of their individual parts. For example, some researchers have argued that creative solutions can reside with a group of people rather than with any one individual (Hargadon and Bechky, 2006; Kurtzberg and Amabile, 2000). Team creative cognition is a teamlevel phenomenon that is an emergent property of the team and goes beyond the individual team members involved in the problem-solving process. We dene team creative cognition as a shared repertoire of cognitive processes among team members that provides a framework for how the team goes about solving problems creatively. The specic and appropriate cognitive processes may vary from team to team and problem to problem, but team creative cognition exists when team members share a common lens for how to approach problems creatively that dynamically iterates among the two subprocesses of: 1) problem identication and formulation; and 2) conceptual breadth, which includes conceptual combination and expansion. For example, team creative cognition includes the team members actively working together to construct the problem at hand, exploring multiple options, challenging assumptions, seeking different perspectives, combining different viewpoints, reecting on past actions, questioning ideas raised, and actively evaluating different options as a team. Team creative cognition is also an iterative rather than static process, where a team cycles back and forth between the two subprocesses of creative cognition as the team experiments with ideas, seeks feedback, and reects on what they have developed. Lastly, team creative cognition exists on a continuum from very low levels of creative cognition to very high levels. See Table 1 for a summary of the cognitive processes that can be included within a teams repertoire of approaches to solving problems creatively, and a summary of the key elements of team creative cognition. As a shared cognitive framework for how to think about solving problems creatively, team creative cognition resides within the team members collective minds for how to dene problems, and the use of different techniques to help in idea generation (e.g., use of metaphors and analogies, trying to view the familiar as strange and the strange as familiar). It also involves thinking across different categories of knowledge instead of along predictable lines, as well as conceptually combining new and sometimes older information to achieve new ideas. In addition, the cognitive subprocesses included in team
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Table 1. Overview of individual and team creative cognition Key subprocesses of creative cognition Problem identication and formulation Recognizing a problem or opportunity Multiple ways of framing the problem or opportunity Identifying the key elements of the problem. Conceptual breadth A) Conceptual combination The synthesis of previously separate concepts Making associations across multiple sources, categories, or knowledge domains (e.g., associative thinking) B) Conceptual expansion The development of new ideas Thinking broadly, using different categories of knowledge to generate ideas (e.g., divergent thinking) Using various techniques like analogies, metaphors, and making remote associations Key components specic to team creative cognition Shared repertoire of creative cognitive processes Combination of creative cognitive processes Synthesis as team members operate as a unit in their approach to creative problem solving Emerging process where members have a common lens or frame for approaching problem solving in a more creative way Iterative process A less static but more dynamic process Continuous cycling between processes as the team experiments with ideas, seeks each others feedback, and reects on what they have developed
creative cognition apply to the generation of alternatives and solutions, as well as the evaluation of these options, as the team cycles within and between the different subprocesses. Some divergent thinking techniques that are used at the conceptual breadth stage help in evaluating the options raised so far, as they search for metaphorical implications, use analogical reasoning to interpret information from different perspectives or within different contexts, and try to identify practical or conceptual limitations of the ideas generated. For example, the team together can examine the different aspects of what has been generated, interpret it using different perspectives or within different contexts, and search for potential implications of what they have discovered, as well as possible limitations to the ideas generated.
and OReilly, 1998). In particular, these teams can combine diverse viewpoints and information, and challenge one another to think creatively. As a result, when teams are diverse in terms of demographic characteristics or area of specialization and they communicate and share their different knowledge, there may be improved performance (e.g., Bartel and Jackson, 1989; Bunderson and Sutcliffe, 2002). However, recently there has been increased attention given to the complexities of all types of diversity (e.g., demographic, functional background, experiences) for performance. In particular, research in the diversity literature in terms of varietydifferences in a particular category within a team (Harrison and Klein, 2007)is most applicable to the within team diversity that has been argued to be relevant for creativity. Although a category can represent any attribute, when it comes to variety within teams, they emphasize variety in terms of differences in information, knowledge, or experience among team members, such as diversity in industry experience, functional background, and nonredundant network ties. Van Der Vegt and Bunderson (2005) nd that the benets of having diversity of knowledge and expertise appear to be mixed. Their study suggests that a positive relationship between expertise diversity and team performance existed only when team members had a
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access to a variety of resources that may help the team function and perform better (Oh, Labianca, and Chung, 2006). One prominent focus has been on outside contacts that provide task- or domainspecic knowledge that can be directly applied to the task at hand (e.g., Cross and Cummings, 2004; Cummings, 2004). In this way, ideas are discussed as being transferred across boundaries (e.g., Allen, 1977; Katz and Tushman, 1981) and reapplied in a new domain (e.g., Burt, 2004; Reagans and McEvily, 2003) or, in some cases, recombined (Hargadon and Sutton, 1997), but it is the knowledge accessed through contacts that is discussed as being recombined directly. For example, Reagans and McEvily (2003) found that the degree of diversity in the focal persons network was important for the potential to transfer knowledge. We take a cognitive view focusing directly on the mechanism of creative cognition and how individual member exposure to outside ties inuences creative cognitive processes that can be applied in a variety of domains. For individuals, there is prior evidence that personal contacts within or outside work can affect creative outcomes. For example, Perry-Smith (2006) found that relationships outside the focal rm facilitated creative performance when individuals were on the periphery of their organizational communication networks. In addition, Madjar, Oldham, and Pratt (2002) found that support from both inside (i.e., supervisors and coworkers) and outside (i.e., family and friends) work was positively correlated with employees creative performance. Each member of a team potentially has relationships with others outside the team that could be useful to the focal teams decision making if what is experienced can be cognitively transferred by the member with these ties to their own team. Creative cognition benets from broad social exposure in which the contact can be task specic as well as general conversations about work encompassing a variety of topics that may be less related to particular work tasks (Perry-Smith, 2006; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). In other words, these ties may not be specically within the focal domain of the team, consistent with prior evidence that broad, divergent personal contacts, not necessarily within a particular problem domain, facilitates creativity (e.g., Perry-Smith, 2006, forthcoming; Rodan and Galunic, 2004). As a result, we focus on communication ties that may encompass informal advice and support, as well as socializing ties, to broadly capture a team members set of outside personal relationships.
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The sheer exposure to how diverse others approach problem solving can shape and socialize how an individual attempts to solve problems. When team members have diverse outside ties, this means they are connected to people with potentially different perspectives and viewpoints. In particular, we focus on the heterogeneity among an individuals set of outside contacts, rather than whether an individual differs from each of their contacts. A person with a set of contacts who differ from one another cannot easily, without reection, make decisions that are consistent with any one contact. As a result, he or she must think autonomously and independently while reconciling divergent views. Furthermore, he/she may become more accustomed to thinking exibly as he/she moves from contact to contact and potentially must adapt communication styles and behavioral norms. When individuals are more accustomed to thinking exibly, they will be more likely to consider less obvious alternatives. As such, those with more diverse outside ties should be more focused on thinking across broad categories of knowledge, making remote associations, and experimenting in problem solving, all of which causes them to exhibit higher levels of creative cognition. We focus specically on individual members social experiences outside their team, in contrast to any formal contacts they may have with other individuals, units, or organizations with whom they are required to interact in the course of completing their work objectives. For example, many founding teams have advisory boards that serve as formal conduits for specialized knowledge and perspectives. We are not interested in these team-level formal connections to the founding team, since the tie to the team may not be attributed to any one team member, but to the team as a whole (see Hansen, 1999, for an example of this approach). In contrast, we are interested in the broad informal social experiences of individual team members (i.e., team members personal ties outside the team), consistent with the focus of network research on informal interpersonal ties (e.g., Brass, 1984; Krackhardt, 1990). Personal ties held by individual team members are key given that each team members social experiences have the potential to affect his/ her creative cognition. Any member with exposure to diverse perspectivesnot just team leaders or appointed contact personscan become practiced at reconciling divergent views and making unusual connections. A variety of diverse outside ties in terms of different backgrounds, past experiences, and
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it after observing a demonstration of the behavior or viewing different thought processes (Bandura, 1986). As such, examples and observations of ways of approaching problem solving can cause the other team members to also try working in this manner. Consistent with these ideas, research has found that the presence of creative role models serves to increase individuals subsequent creative performance (e.g., Jaussi and Dionne, 2003; Shalley and Perry-Smith, 2001; Zhou, 2003), and that highly creative people have often studied under highly creative individuals, or have been exposed to creative role models (e.g., Simonton, 1984; Zuckerman, 1977). Thus, in itself, this exposure to a creative cognitive role model should be more likely to lead to the infusion of creative cognition in the team via observational learning. However, the spread of creative cognition from the individual to the team does not occur only via observation, where modeling can occur regardless of interpersonal interaction. Banduras social cognitive theory suggests that cognitive processes can also develop via enactive experience, which is an individuals direct personal experience of attaining a task or skill (Bandura, 1986). Essentially, this occurs when individuals do not merely observe an example or behavior, but actively pay attention and store a symbolic representation in their mind about how to behave in particular situations. The interactive dynamics associated with working collaboratively on a team, in particular, can help facilitate this type of modeling process. For example, whether serving as a role model consciously or unconsciously, when an individual team member is high on creative cognition, he/she approaches the teams problem-solving process in more creative ways. As team members participate in the discussion, they are exposed to the creative problem-solving approaches of this member with creative cognition, and are able to react to it and have a free ow of ideas. As they see this team member modeling the use of taking fresh perspectives and trying to generate novel ideas, this should serve to weaken the other team members conventional mind sets. Furthermore, when teams are problem solving, they need to build on, combine, and critically improve each members ideas through open interaction and questioning (Amabile et al., 1996). As they are doing this, they cant help but pay attention to the different approaches to problem solving that a member with creative cognition may take. Therefore, they are more likely to have an enactive experience and attend to and store in
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their mind some of these creative problem-solving methods. Through their social interactions with each other, team members are exposed to new paradigms and perspectives that can enable cross-fertilization of ideas about the issue at hand and about how to think about the issues, resulting in creative synergy within the team. In other words, team members are not just observing a distant social model, but are interacting and working with this creative role model. For example, King and Anderson (1990) proposed that team creativity incorporates interpersonal discussion among team members. Also, Csikszentmihalyi (1996) argued that creativity does not occur in one individuals mind, but through interactions with others, and as such, interaction among team members is expected to lead to more and better ideas. Therefore, interactions with the ideas and experiences of other people can change the nature of team members thought processes, behaviors, and communication. As such, since team creative cognition is social in nature, these cognitive skills are contagious and become a property of the team due to their social interactions. Over time, teams come to realize the approaches they can use to develop new ideas as well as combine and integrate inputs from multiple team members to develop creative ideas. The logic of our argument so far is that if a member of the team invokes creative approaches to solving problems in the form of creative cognition, vicarious learning via observational and enactive modeling experiences can cause other team members to also approach problem solving in a different and more creative manner. That is, once team members see another member using different lenses than they may use in approaching problem solving, they may be more likely to try this approach as well. Consistent with these arguments, research has found that when new members are introduced to teams or old members who have left the team and then returned, the more long-term team members creativity is inuenced (Gruenfeld, Martorana, and Fan, 2000; Choi and Thompson, 2005). Specically, the longterm team members tend to provide more creative solutions when they have new or returning members on their team. This suggests that there is transference of new ways of problem solving. Similarly, research on minority dissent suggests that team members who hold minority views are inuential not because they merely persuade others to accept their ideas, but because they push the team to think more critically and question assumptions, which helps the team be
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This quandary of members holding unique approaches to problem solving (e.g., creative cognition) but not sharing them can be addressed by understanding a members cognitive status within the team, in the form of member sociocognitive centrality. A sociocognitive team network is a team member-by-member network that represents the extent to which each member holds common knowledge. In this case, knowledge can include pro/ con arguments in response to an issue (Kameda, Ohtsubo, and Takezawa, 1997), alternative choices, as well as the evaluation of those choices (Ward and Reingen, 1990). This network is considered socioin the sense that cognition is not intraindividual only, but is in reference to the collective team. While a relevant question is the extent to which social interactions within the team inuence the development of the sociocognitive network, we focus on the sociocognitive network irrespective of the social dynamics within the team. Sociocognitive centrality is dened as the degree of overlap between the knowledge held by one member and the knowledge held by other members (Kameda et al., 1997), or in network terms, the outdegree centrality in the team sociocognitive network. This can be more simply described if we think of a small four-person team. Those who possess more common knowledge with other team members are more sociocognitively central to their team, while those who possess more unique knowledge than others would be considered as being more sociocognitively peripheral. For example, consider team member A, who has four bits of knowledge about a particular issue. In a four-member team, if member B has two bits of the same knowledge, member C has three bits of the same knowledge, but member D has zero bits of the same knowledge, member A would be considered fairly sociocognitively central. On the other hand, member D has no overlap with member As knowledge or any of the other members knowledge. Therefore, member D would be considered on the sociocognitive periphery, at a fairly extreme level (see Figure 2). Therefore, the concept of sociocognitive centrality is tapping the distribution of a team members knowledge and perspectives across the rest of the team. Research has begun to explore the effects of team member sociocognitive centrality on the propensity of individuals to share their unique information, knowledge, and expertise. Sociocognitively central members have been found to be more inuential in team decision making (Kameda et al., 1997). When
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Member C
X X X X
Y Y
Member B
W W
Member D
members are sociocognitively central, they are in the enviable position of being able to validate other members knowledge and perspectives while at the same time, the focal members knowledge and perspectives can be validated by others. As a result, other members perceive the central member as having a well-balanced array of skills, knowledge, and expertise. This team-generated belief about cognitive status enhances the members indirect inuence. In addition, sociocognitively central members are expected to be more involved in discussions. For example, Sargis and Larson (2002) found that sociocognitively central individuals spoke more often and contributed more knowledge-based comments than those who were sociocognitively peripheral. Thus, the more overlapping knowledge a member has with other team members, the more sociocognitively central he/she will be, and consequently, the more inuential he/she will be in team decision making. In many cases, an individual with creative cognition may have thoughts and ideas that differ from his/her teammates. We expect that even when a sociocognitively central members preferences for thinking and action are in the minority, this member will be more successful in problem solving than a sociocognitively peripheral member with the same minority preferences. This would be because sociocognitively central individuals would naturally take
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a more active part in any team discussions, and be less resistant to other members alternative arguments or attempts to persuade them. Furthermore, a team members cognitive status in the team should play a unique and signicant role in approaching problem solving, and ultimately, achieving consensus around his/her preferred approach. Sargis and Larson (2002) found that the inuence of the sociocognitively central member occurred even when the central members preferences were in the minority. Similarly, Kameda et al. (1997) found that groups were more likely to choose the preference held by the most sociocognitively central member even when this members view was in the minority. We are suggesting that although a member may be central in the teams sociocognitive network, he/she can be either the facilitator or barrier for introducing unique approaches to a problem, depending on his/her level of individual creative cognition. For example, a member with diverse outside ties and high creative cognition may share common knowledge within his/her team, as well as possess unique approaches to solving problems. In other words, the unique approaches to thinking about the issues proposed by the member with creative cognition may not themselves overlap with the knowledge known by other team members. Ironically, although within the team one could say these individuals are entrenched within the status quo due to their sociocognitive centrality, their social experiences outside the team provide them with the creative cognition to serve as important sparks for creative problem solving within their team. On the other hand, it is not surprising that team members who are central in their teams sociocognitive network and who are relatively low on creative cognition will serve as barriers to their teams creativity in approaching problem solving. Here, the member has high cognitive status in the team, as noted by his/her centrality in the teams sociocognitive network, but he/she does not approach problem solving creatively, and instead follows established norms and routines for problem solving. Therefore, when a team member is sociocognitively central to the team and also high on creative cognition, it would be best for an individual members creative cognition to be transferred and infused within the team. The key here is that an individual member with creative cognition needs to have the cognitive status in the team, which is conferred through his/her centrality in the teams sociocognitive network, to be able to have the team pay attention to the novel
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the role of time and the impact of the start-up teams evolution on the infusion of creative cognition. For example, how long a team has worked together can have an effect on members creativity and the way they communicate. On the one hand, an entrepreneur may be part of a commercialization start-up team where he/she is working closely with a multidisciplinary group over an extensive period of time. In other cases, the entrepreneur may have just started working with the team. As a result, stage of development of the team in terms of the entrepreneurial project time line may matter. Furthermore, time inuences team members level of familiarity with one another and with the task, affecting how much information is common versus unique among team members, and how important unique information is viewed by the team (Gruenfeld et al., 2000). Membership in the team, and the team itself, evolves over time from the pre-start-up phase to the start-up phase to the post-start-up phase, with members entering and exiting at various times. Thus, the team and its members evolve from the early stages of we have an idea through later stages of we have gone through all the planning to we are an ofcial form now, but are working through implementation issues. For example, some have posited three distinct phases of development in high tech start-up teams (Clarysse and Moray, 2004; Vanaelst et al., 2006). The prefounding phase, where the primary activity is to determine the market viability of the business, principally may be made up of technical researchers. At the end of this phase, a rm is formally established and the team enters the founding phase, where the team works to strengthen the viability of the business and secure funding, for example. At this point, roles become more formalized and other content experts may join the team. In the post-start-up phase, the team processes, roles, and structures have become more dened as the team works to develop and grow the business. Throughout this process, the team becomes more formalized, new members are joining the team, and old members may be exiting the team. We argue that there is a window of opportunity in which creative cognition can be infused within the team. Specically, the team will be most open to considering unique approaches to thinking about the problem in the pre-start-up phase of the project. This would normally be the time that members are trying to gure out how to get going, so they will be more cognitively open to hearing different approaches, more accepting of unique role models, and more
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exible about actually trying different ways of thinking. Essentially, before there is an established roadmap or mindset about the standard way of doing things, the team should be more susceptible to the inuence of each of its members, including one that has creative cognition. Then, as team creative cognition is infused within the team, the team develops a repertoire of ways of thinking, interacting, and behaving, which will continue to evolve over the time line of the project. If creative cognition is not infused during this window of time at pre-start-up, the team is much less likely to develop team creative cognition later in the timeline of the project. They will have become more set in their routines, caught up in the problem-solving process, and more likely to resist making any changes in their planned work processes. For example, West (2007) found that post-start-up teams had signicantly less cognitive heterogeneity than pre-start-up teams. Proposition 4: The positive relationship between individual creative cognition and team creative cognition is moderated by the stage of development of the venture on the entrepreneurial timeline such that, the relationship between individual creative cognition and team creative cognition is weaker during later phases of the venture.
DISCUSSION
In this article, we explain how outside contacts inuence team members creative cognition, and the conditions under which individual creative cognition is infused into the team leading to the emergence of team creative cognition. In particular, we describe how creative cognition is strengthened in individual team members via particular outside ties, and how this creative cognition is spread from the individual to the team via modeling processes that occur through team interactions, ultimately resulting in team creative cognition. Our propositions follow the generation of creative thinking from individuals to teams, and develop multilevel ideas going from inside individuals heads, to their interactions with their team and outside others, to the team level. We also highlight the role of sociocognitive centrality within teams and suggest how these sociocognitive networks can interact to inuence the teams creative problem solving. In particular, sociocognitively central team members who also have diverse
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that individual to be more central in their teams sociocognitive network so that his/her ideas are attended to. Our arguments also suggest a variety of implications for future empirical research. First, we realize that certain factors may make it more likely that creative cognition will be developed, transferred, and infused within the team. Since we argue that individual team members potentially serve as conduits and receivers of creative cognition for their team, a number of factors could moderate this effect, and it would be important to conceptually tease out these effects in future research. For example, the type of team (e.g., technology commercialization venture, autonomous start-up team) could have an effect on the teams processes and cognition. Also, there may be individual differences related to personality and personal style that could have an impact, such as openness to experience, extraversion, and some team members being more persuasive communicators than others. Another possibility for future research is to explore under what conditions creative cognition can be infused in the later phases of team development. For example, when a newcomer with creative cognition joins an in-progress team, he/she may be more inuential given his/her uniqueness to the team. First, existing team members tend to pay more attention to the new member. They are curious about how this person will contribute. If the member has weaker ties to the team, since he/she has not worked with the members, the existing members may not be surprised when this member approaches problems in a different way. For example, given that individuals prefer social and cognitive balance, they expect people they know well to agree with them and those they know less well to disagree (Phillips et al., 2004). Thus, they are more open to attending to and processing differences from newcomers. Interestingly, although the members may nd the newcomer disruptive to their processing, this member may still inuence the team to think in different ways. For example, in Gruenfeld et al.s study (2000), the teams did not necessarily adopt the idea of itinerate members (i.e., members who had been away from the group temporarily), but the presence of the pseudo newcomer did affect the overall creativity of the team. Thus, we expect that newcomers who have creative cognition can serve as an important role model for the creative cognition of entrepreneurial teams.
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In addition, it is always difcult to try to examine individual-level cognition and attempt to measure different cognitive processes. Moreover, we have conceptualized team creative cognition as a shared repertoire of cognitive processes among team members, so the challenge of measuring cognition at the team level is even greater. Although a challenging construct to measure, it is critical for future research to pursue various measurement approaches. We offer a few ideas. At the team level, a combination of observational and self-report techniques can be used. Similar to approaches used to measure collective work group mood (Bartel and Saavedra, 2000), independent raters could observe teams and content code discussions that may be indicative of the team members engaging in the subprocesses of team creative cognition. Surveys could be used to capture self reports of engaging in certain cognitive processes and to uncover cognitive processes not apparent via observation. Agreement among team members could be used to determine the extent creative cognition processes are shared among many, or all, of the team members versus isolated to only one or two members. A nal area for future research is to further examine the role of inuential members of the team as to their cognitive diversity and position in the sociocognitive network, as well as their position in the network structure of the team itself. Specically, different teams will have different structures that represent the communication patterns of the team. For example, in some teams, all members communicate with each other. In other teams, some members may be on the fringe of the team with regard to their communication patterns, and they may communicate with only one or two other team members. There are a number of different communication structures that could exist, and what position the more inuential members in the actual network of the team holds may be interesting to examine. In summary, our propositions suggest a variety of avenues for future theoretical and empirical research. By highlighting the interaction between team social interactions and cognition, we inform the understanding of team creativity in general and entrepreneurial teams creativity in particular.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank our editor Harry Sapienza, the participants of the SEJ Launch Conference, and Chad Navis for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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