Network Structure shapes the Impact of Diversity in Collective Learning

TL;DR

This paper investigates how social network structure influences the effect of skill diversity on collective learning performance, revealing that network density and task complexity determine whether diversity is beneficial or detrimental.

Contribution

It provides a mechanistic model showing how network density and task complexity shape the impact of diversity on collective learning outcomes.

Findings

Diversity impairs performance in simple tasks.

In complex tasks, dense networks benefit from diversity, while sparse networks do not.

Connectivity enhances the advantages of diversity in solving complex problems.

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 effect of diversity: while homogeneous populations outperform diverse ones in sparse networks, the opposite is true in dense networks, where diversity boosts collective performance. Our findings also provide insight on how to forge teams in an increasingly interconnected world: the more we are connected, the more we can benefit from diversity to solve complex problems.