Managing Creativity in Small Worlds
工程师和科学家的高流动性使发明者的社交网络跨越企业边界，形成小世界。小世界既提升企业内部创造力，也通过人员流动和知识转移将创意扩散到其他企业。本文为企业在知识外溢环境中管理创新提供建议。
Greater job mobility among engineers and scientists has caused the extended social networks of inventors to become increasingly connected. As a result, invention increasingly occurs within small worlds (or social networks) that straddle firm boundaries. Small worlds provide both strategic opportunity and potential threat; while they can increase creativity within a firm, they also aid in the diffusion of creative knowledge to other firms through personnel and knowledge transfer. Firms that operate within small worlds such as in Silicon Valley long agolearned to manage invention in an environment of rampant knowledge spillovers across firm boundaries. Now, however, all firms need to learn how to manage innovation in a small world environment. This article offers them advice about how to do this. (Publisher’s Abstract)