The Performance Implications of Shared Experience across Creative Project Teams

This study reviews recent empirical results that show the relationship between shared experience and project performance to be negative. After discussing the difference between sharing experience across projects and interaction and learning within projects, I propose two ways that shared experience might create performance deficits. One is that shared experience carried forward from previous contacts might create barriers to interaction in the current project. The second is that shared experience might constrain search and lead to the acceptance of projects of lower quality. The distributed cognitive structures that constitute shared experience may either displace important developmental processes or alter the processes that lead to project formation. I present a model of these processes as operating through a series of mediating variables and propose directions for future research. 3 In any group setting there are two components of shared experience, the current process of interaction (experience sharing) and the distributed cognitive structure that is carried forward into the current context from prior encounters between group members. Experience sharing (which I will hereafter call interaction) has generally been viewed as contributing positively to group learning processes such as information exchange and the development of common knowledge that are believed to lead to improved project outcomes. Except in studies that investigate the effects of familiarity between group members on task shared experience developed in past encounters has tended to be lumped together with the effects of current interaction. In studies of familiarity, the relationship between shared experience and performance has been seen as positive. Groups whose members know each other from before are more effective at sharing information and faster and better at completing tasks. Recently I found results that run counter to this common view in two different kinds of creative project teams. In studies of performance in natural science research projects (Skilton, 2006a) and in Hollywood motion picture production (Skilton 2006b), I found that project teams whose members have worked together repeatedly tend to produce products that are less successful in the market. Other scholars have begun to report similar results. A recent study by Uzzi and Spiro (2005) which found a similar negative relationship between the level of shared experience and performance in the Broadway musical theatre industry. Guimerà, Uzzi, Spiro and Amaral (2005) report that collaborative teams in the social and natural sciences produce outcomes with lower performance when the level of repeat collaboration is higher. Berman, Down and …