Knowledge Domain Spanners in Ideation

Ideation is increasingly receiving attention as a management issue, and we can at present witness the emergence and diffusion of a range of different proactive approaches towards ideation. This development is hardly surprising in the light of the changed nature of innovation activities, including a higher reliance also on external sources for innovation and more focus on non‐technological types of innovation, such as business model innovations. Firms need to handle both a larger number of sources for innovation and more different types of innovations. This article investigates how spanning different knowledge domains influences individuals' ideation performance. A study has been performed using data on all ideas created within an organization during three years. From this data, two broad set of knowledge domains are identified and the influence on ideation of the individuals spanning these domains – the knowledge domain spanners in ideation – are investigated. The empirical results show that knowledge domain spanners in ideation have higher ideation performance than individuals engaged in only one knowledge domain.