Research Design Connection: Supporting Group Work

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | May 13th, 2019

Wu and colleagues determined that working in groups of different sizes often has different outcomes. Their results confirm the value of design that supports teams of various sizes. The investigators found that when they analyzed “more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954-2014…smaller teams have tended to disrupt science and technology with new ideas and opportunities, whereas larger teams have tended to develop existing ones…These results demonstrate that both small and large teams are essential to a flourishing ecology of science and technology…These results support the hypothesis that large teams may be better designed or incentivized to develop current science and technology, and that small teams disrupt science and technology with new problems and opportunities.” In an article reporting on the Wu, Wang and Evans study published in the New York Times (Benedict Carey, February 13, 2019, “Can Science Be Too Big?”), Evans was …