Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces
Jesse Shore, Ethan Bernstein, and David Lazer

TL;DR
This study experimentally examines how network structure influences information and solution search in organizations, revealing that dense clustering promotes information diversity but hampers solution diversity, affecting overall performance.
Contribution
It provides new experimental evidence on how network clustering differentially impacts information and solution exploration, clarifying previous conflicting findings.
Findings
Dense clustering increases information diversity.
Dense clustering decreases solution diversity.
Network structure has opposite effects on different problem-solving aspects.
Abstract
Using data from a large laboratory experiment on problem solving in which we varied the structure of 16-person networks we investigate how an organization's network structure may be constructed to optimize performance in complex problem-solving tasks. Problem solving involves both search for information and search for theories to make sense of that information. We show that the effect of network structure is opposite for these two equally important forms of search. Dense clustering encourages members of a network to generate more diverse information, but it also has the power to discourage the generation of diverse theories: clustering promotes exploration in information space, but decreases exploration in solution space. Previous research, tending to focus on only one of those two spaces, had produced inconsistent conclusions about the value of network clustering. By adopting an…
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