RT Generic
T1 The renaissance of the "renaissance man"? : specialists vs. generalists in teams of inventors
A1 Melero, Eduardo
A1 Palomeras, Neus
A2 Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto para el Desarrollo Empresarial (INDEM), 
AB Is there a role for the multifaceted Renaissance Man in modern team-intensive innovationactivities? This paper argues that researchers with broad knowledge, also known as generalists,make an especially valuable contribution to innovation teams. Given the re-combinative nature oftechnological progress, innovation results depend crucially on the skilful matching of differentpieces of knowledge. The presence of generalists in innovation teams makes the knowledgerecombination process more effective, even if this comes at the cost of reduced knowledge depth.Moreover, typical barriers in team processes become less acute with the presence of generalists. Weanalyze the role of generalists versus specialists in innovation teams by tracking the trajectories ofinventors in the electrical and electronics industry through their patenting activity. Our findingssuggest that innovation teams with the contribution of generalists outperform those that rely on adiverse set of specialists
SN 1989-8843
YR 2012
FD 2012
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/14057
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/14057
LA eng
NO Financial support under Grants ECO2009-08278 andECO2009-08308 of the Spanish Government is gratefully acknowledged
DS e-Archivo
RD 1 may. 2024