Connecting diverse knowledge across time and space – the case of virtual teams

One way to achieve long-term competitiveness is through geographically distributed multidisciplinary teams as those can encompass diverse knowledge sources. However, previous empirical studies have shown that member heterogeneity and geographic separation hinder effective sharing and use of team knowledge. The paper explores how such teams interact to overcome the barriers and take advantage of their “built in” knowledge diversity. The findings indicate that teams lacking common background knowledge at the beginning of the project rely on their external intellectual and social communities in order to resolve team members’ differences. The reported research establishes a positive correlation between team members’ participation in multiple professional and social networks and teams’ abilities to successfully build on their knowledge diversity.