Network structure shapes the impact of diversity in collective learning.

ABSTRACT: It is widely believed that diversity arising from different skills enhances the performance of teams, and in particular, their ability to learn and innovate. However, diversity has also been associated with negative effects on the communication and coordination within collectives. Yet, despite the importance of diversity as a concept, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of how its impact is shaped by the underlying social network. To fill this gap, we model skill diversity within a simple model of collective learning and show that its effect on collective performance differs depending on the complexity of the task and the network density. In particular, we find that diversity consistently impairs performance in simple tasks. In contrast, in complex tasks, link density modifies the ef

SUBMITTER: Baumann F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10827803 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature