Facilitators and inhibitors for integrating expertise diversity in innovation teams: The case of plasmid exchange in molecular biology

Innovation increasingly relies on collaboration in teams instead of individual efforts. Although the advantages of teams for innovating are virtually undisputed, we have only a very rudimentary understanding of their success drivers. To shed more light on innovation teams, we conceptualize multiplicity in expertise as nonredundant expertise and distinguish it from factors that facilitate or hinder the integration of this expertise. These factors are overlap in expertise, disparity in team members’ status, and whether or not teams use automation technology. We use the empirical context of molecular biology, especially the part of this field in which teams produce and exchange genetic material in the form of so-called plasmids. Combining data about plasmids from a central plasmid repository (AddGene) with bibliometric data endows us with a rich dataset capturing information about team diversity in addition to two innovation performance measures (the number of plasmid orders and the number of citations attracted by publications). Our analysis shows that multiplicity in expertise increases innovation performance; this relationship is strengthened by the overlap in expertise and weakened by disparity in status and the use of the automation technology. Our paper provides a more detailed theory of expertise diversity and contributes to the diversity literature. Our findings also lead to implications for practitioners.     

School Start Time Change: An In‐Depth Examination of School Districts in the United States

In response to the scientific evidence documenting both profound developmental changes in sleep and circadian biology during adolescence and the myriad of negative health, performance, and safety outcomes risks associated with chronic sleep loss, at least 70 public school districts in the United States, representing approximately 1,000 schools, have successfully implemented a delay in high school start times. However, despite the compelling evidence supporting school start time change as a key strategy in addressing the epidemic of adolescent sleep loss, many school districts across the country with early high school start times have not considered the option to implement later bell schedules for adolescents. Moreover, while the current scientific literature has clearly documented the positive outcomes associated with delayed high school start times, these studies contain limited information regarding the process by which school districts consider, approve and implement bell schedule changes. Thus, this in‐depth examination of those school districts that have been successful in changing their bell schedules is intended to support the efforts of other districts in various stages of contemplating this measure. We utilized a multi‐pronged approach (literature review, case studies, telephone interviews, online survey) to summarize the experiences of school districts across the United States in regard to challenges faced, strategies employed, and lessons learned in the hope that this information will be a useful tool for other school districts looking to chart a course forward to promote the health, safety, and academic opportunities of their students.     

Professional community and the problem of high school reform

A two-year qualitative study of mathematics and English teachers in two urban comprehensive high schools investigated how teacher community serves as resource for teacher development and school reform. A school engaged in whole-school reform sustained high teacher commitment and school-level community by constituting professional community strongly at the school level, but its departments displayed varying capacity and disposition to examine problems of teaching and learning at the classroom level. In the second school, innovative teacher communities were constituted strongly at the department level in English and mathematics, but suffered problems of stress and turnover due to weak organizational supports for teacher development and school reform. Findings point both to the potential contribution of professional communities situated in subject departments and the challenge of capitalizing on such communities to advance whole-school reform. The study suggests complex relationships among organizational context, teacher community, teacher development, and institutional reform.     

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