Innovation and discovery involve individuals working successfully together in teams. It is critical for the Science of Science and Innovation Policy to understand how the cognition of individuals, the direct source of novel ideas and critical decision making, is impacted by social teamwork variables. Prior research has typically studied social teamwork variables in isolation or individual cognition variables in isolation. To know how to intervene to increase engineering and scientific output, the relationships between the two must be known, or else we might improve one at the cost of hurting the other, which likely would have no net improvement in final scientific or engineering productivity. The current project examines a very large quantity of video data collected from a recent highly successful case of science and engineering, the Mars Exploration Rover, which both wildly exceeded engineering requirements for the mission and produced many important scientific discoveries. Yet, not all days of the mission were equally successful. From this video record, the project traces the path from the structure of different subgroups (such as having formal roles and diversity of knowledge in the subgroups) to the occurrence of different social processes (such as task conflict, breadth of participation, communication norms, and shared mental models) to the occurrence of different cognitive processes (such as analogy, information search, and evaluation) and finally to outcomes (such as new methods for rover control and new hypotheses regarding the nature of Mars).
Another critical factor for Science of Science and Innovation Policy is to examine both divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Innovation rarely happens unless new ideas are considered. But progress will not happen unless the best ideas among the proposed set are ultimately selected. To know how to best intervene to improve discovery and innovation, progress must be made on finding out when to intervene, which likely depends upon whether divergent or convergent thinking is currently required. A number of prior inconsistent research results likely resulted from a failure to separately consider divergent and convergent thinking. The current project examines both elements to build a much more complete model of how cognitive and social variables come together to produce new and successful engineering innovations and scientific discoveries.
Broader Impacts: The US is facing serious challenges in the fields of science and technology. Innovation must be harnessed to generate new products, create employment opportunities, and strengthen the national economy. It is vital that the flourishing of science and engineering teams be examined with the same rigor as other important human endeavors. This project also has implications for science and engineering education: as ways of composing, structuring, and instructing teams are examined, suggestions for pedagogy will be formulated based on empirical findings.
