1. game changer: structural folds with cognitive distance in video game development
david stark columbia university

2. My research collaborators:
Balazs Vedres Co-PI, Central European University
Mathijs de Vaan PhD candidate, Columbia University
This project supported by a grant
from the National Science Foundation.

3. Innovation is recombination produced by the collision of evaluative principles.

4. Innovation at the overlap

6. “Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in Overlapping Groups”
Vedres and Stark Am J Soc 2010

7. Innovation at the overlap
Brokerage at the gap
Innovation at the overlap
Structural hole
Structural fold

13. This project brings these analytic moments together, combining
attention to structural features

14. This project brings these analytic moments together, combining
attention to structural features
and
attention to cultural practices. A B

15. Network analysts have tended to assume that cognitive distance mirrors social distance.
We relax that assumption.

16. What matters in explaining creative success?
The diversity of the cognitive/cultural elements or
the structural folding of group membership?

17. Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman
Semiosphere not as a code
But as multiplicity of codes

18. Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman
Semiosphere not as a code
But as multiplicity of codes A B

19. Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman
Semiosphere not as a code
But as multiplicity of codes A B
The more difficult the translation of the non-intersecting, the more valuable this paradoxical communication becomes.
The tension of two tendencies.

20. A B

21. Data

22. 16,507 video games 139,727 individuals
Global video game production,

23. We operationalize cognitive distance and group structure by studying team formation.
How does the history of a team’s makeup
shape its creative success?

24. How to do historical network analysis when the units of analysis are fleeting episodic projects?

25. It is not the history of the team per se that is of interest
It is not the history of the team per se that is of interest. Instead, we gather very detailed data on the histories of the team members.
With these we can reconstruct the cognitive distance and the
community memberships for every project team.

31. For 139,727 individuals in 16,507 production teams across 30 years …

32. Analysis

33. Cognitive diversity Videos games differ in their stylistic elements.
Each game has been coded for the presence or absence of 105 different stylistic (cognitive) elements.

34. As they move through the project space, individuals are exposed to various cognitive elements…

35. … allowing us to construct a cognitive profile for every individual
and from these to compute
for every team and
for all communities within a team
a measure of cognitive distance.

36. Group structure
Videos games differ in their group structure depending on the cohesive ties that are formed as members worked with each other in the past.
Through these cohesive structures members acquire informal codes of work and tacit knowledge of each other.

37. As they move through the project space, individuals have opportunities to work together with others…

38. As they move through the project space, individuals have opportunities to work together with others…

39. … allowing us to reconstruct
for every team the distinctive
cohesive groups;
to identify the cognitive distance across these groups;
and to identify, in particular, whether these groups are
isolated, brokered, or structurally folded.

41. We then test whether cognitive distance and structural folding contribute to creative success.
We expect to find significant positive effects
for cognitive folding, i.e., when cognitively distant groups are structurally folded.

42. Dependent variables
Our dependent variables recognize that cultural products can be innovative without being successful (and vice versa).
Therefore...

43. Three dependent variables:
1) A project can be innovative; it can be stylistically distinctive.
2) A project can be critically successful.
3) But a project will be a game changer only when it is innovative and critically successful.

44. Findings

51. The effects of structural folding are compounded when cohesive groups are not only overlapping but also cognitively distant.
Such cognitive folding mobilizes a productive tension of rules, roles, and categories that promotes successful innovation.