The need for proximity in building collective intuition

Yet another interesting and relevant working paper that looks at the factors, and in particular 'proximity', that effect the building of collective intuition in an organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the conditions under which intuitive forms of reasoning emerge to accelerate complex problem solving in product innovation teams. The paper originates from an ethnographic field study of four product teams in two companies: a hardware and software project from both a U.S. and a Japanese computer firm. This inductive, theory-building study was designed to use multiple cases to examine closely the learning and problem-solving behavior of product innovation teams. A problem-solving lens offers an insightful way in which to view product innovation, offering rich descriptions of interpersonal communication, project coordination, and the associated context for project team member interactions (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). Nonetheless, the empirical research on product innovation as problem solving has sometimes neglected to consider the challenges faced on the human side of problem solving in product teams (e.g., motivating people, creating the conditions for cross-functional teams to work together) (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1995). This study provides a response to this gap by focusing on the work practices associated with product innovation teams (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Engestrom & Middleton, 1998).

Communities of practice, global idea exchange, Open innovation, together these all help to deal with the proximity issue using internet technologies, exchanges and forums. For something as broad as innovation however, face to face meetings may be a prerequisite, proximity cannot be modeled or synthesised. On the otherhand, for something more concrete and specific like the replication of an IS/IT systems in another context, real proximity may not be needed. The internet tools may be rich enough because they are closer to the medium of IS/IT.