Disruptive Diversity and Recurring Cohesion : Assembling Creative Teams in the Video Game Industry , 1979 - 2009 October 2011

This online paper may be quoted under fair use and academic conventions. This paper may not be published elsewhere in any form (including e-mail lists and electronic bulleting boards) without the authors' express permission. To test the proposition that a high level of recurring cohesion and a high level of stylistic diversity can combine for successful team performance, this study constructs a dataset of the careers of 139,727 individuals who participated in project teams producing 16,507 video games between 1979 and 2009. Findings indicate that teams with more dissimilar stylistic experiences outperform teams with more homogenous backgrounds, but only for higher levels of recurring cohesion. Teams with high diversity and high social cohesion are better able to harmonize the noisy cacophony of an (otherwise) excessive plurality of voices, thereby exploiting the potential beneficial effects of cognitive diversity.